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PHOTOGRAPHY J

An Album of Pictures and Words Written and Compiled by AARON SCHARF A SUPERBLY ILLUSTRATED, lively, inti- mate history of one of the great aesthetic adventures of the modern world—the making of the first . Here are the fascinating early experi- ments with processing, the first primi- tive attempts at colour , the ingenious equipment invented for spe- cial effects—and here are the prints that resulted, now precious beyond measure. First-hand accounts by the pioneer photographers vividly recall the pursuit of a historic event, a spectacular land- scape, a fleeting facial expression. There are chapters on the work of the inventors— Niepce, Fox Talbot, Da- guerre, and Bayard—and on the profes- sionals, like Nadar, who photographed everything from the Paris sewers (by electric ) to Sarah Bernhardt. Boume made a record of the landscape of India and the that was, and perhaps still is, unequalled. The beginnings of —John Thom- son's types for instance, and the very undocumentary work of Julia Mar- garet Cameron—showed two paths photography could follow. Yet another, the development of photography as an analytic technique, can be seen in the work of Marey and Muybridge. The de- velopment of colour photography brings the text to a close, and a selected bibliog- raphy rounds out the volume. Aaron Scharf, well known for his ear- lier books, Creative Photography and Art and Photography, was an adviser to the British Broadcasting Corporation on the programmes out of which this book grew.

180 illustrations, including 10 ' 'es in full colour Pioneers of nhotopraphv 770.0 SCHAR^^^-.^ ..

liTPAL LIBRARY I DATE DUE

PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

AN ALBUM OF PICTURES AND WORDS WRITTEN AND COMPILED BY AARON SCHARF

HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

>?*^ By arrangement with the British Broadcasting Corporation PREVIOUS PAGE Herman Krone: self portrait with his photographic equipment

RIGHT Samuel A. Cooley. his assistants and photographic waggons

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Scharf, Aaron, 1922- Pioneers of photography.

Bibliography: p. I. Photography—History. 2. Photographers.

I. British Broadcasting Corporation. il. Title. TR15.S34 770'.9'034 75-42216 ISBN 0-8109-0408-X '' . <.'*^

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 75-42216 Copyright © 1975 The British Broadcasting Corporation. Incorporated, New York Published in 1976 by Harry N. Abrams, '>''^l*i All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of the publishers Printed and bound in Japan CONTENTS

Foreword 7

Introducrion 9

I The Pencil of Nature 13

2 The Mirror with a Memory 33 Sun 3 Pictures 53

4 Famous Men and Fair Women 71

5 Travelling Man 87

6 When I was a Photographer 103

7 The Indelible Record 119

8 Animal Locomotion 139

9 Work 157

10 Colour Notes 173 i^ List of Illustrations 186

Bibhography 189

FOREWORD

these for the of a practicable natural-colour process. But even in As I began working on the background research one cannot escape the enthusiasm of television programmes 'Pioneers of Photography' it be- sections of the book, people whose words give a feeling came obvious to me - no specialist in the subject - that those extraordinar)' immediacy to everything they describe. It was not always easy for the general reader to find some of these writers are often trying to prove some- of the key documents and first-hand statements by the Ofcourse, or to an audience and, as with photographers themselves. There exists, tor instance, a thing either to themselves kind, their personahties and circum- recent facsimile publication of Henrj' Fox Talbot's book. any evidence of this have to be borne in mind. When Nicephore The Pencil ofNature, yet copies are difficult to track down stances to Claude in 1816 to say that he had suc- for those who are not specialists. I hope, therefore, that Niepce wrote images on paper, I personally by supplying a small number of carefully chosen docu- ceeded in getting evidence he sent widi the letter has ments, both images and texts, culled from the first hun- beheve him. But the Like Thomas Wedgwood before him, he dred years of the experience of photography, this album not survived. able to fix an image permanently and no reply will answer a real need. was not yet Claude's has been traced which would tell us of the The more I assembled together, the more fascinated I of fij-st negatives by the time they reached became - not only by the statements themselves but also condition ofthese Nadar was writing his memoirs long after the by the personalities involved: Nicephore Niepce com- Paris. and it must be remembered that he, municating the lucid and detailed accounts of his experi- events he described Margaret Cameron, couldn't resist a good stor)' ments to his brother Claude; the first reports in English like Julia Nevertheless, that docs magazines of Daguerre's discovery and the responses of and was a little hazy about datc-s. vividness of both their narratives. Talbot and others to them; Mrs Talbot complaining to not detract from the intercstmg material has come from her mother-in-law of Henry being discouraged; the Some of the most I could easily spend a lifetime fol- impulsiveness ofJulia Margaret Cameron who couldn't chance meetings, and the clues that I've been given by many kind resist rushing into her family at dinner and ruining the lowing up people. But there is a limit to what orJy one tablecloths with chemicals. Nadar had no end of trouble and helpful researcher can achieve on photographing the Paris sewers by artificial light - the producer and one hard-worked time costs money and we steam from bath water created a fog. And , a scries with a modest budget; to produce. So here, with an introduc- in a glacial pass in the Himalayas, complained that no one have programmes guidelines from Aaron Schart, the photographers who had not actually experienced it could realise the tion and must play their own agony of pouring photographic chemicals with chapped can speak for themselves. But readers as of quarry, and follow up for hands. part, use this book a kind anything they fmd intriguing. The later chapters (as also the programmes) deal not themselves item, part ot which is re- so much with individuals as they do with the larger con- Perhaps the most fascinating time, is tlie small red morocco siderations of new developments in photography: the produced here for the first photography of movement by Muybridge and Marey; album of by Dr John Adamson and his brother sent to Fox Talbot with a letter on the magazine. Camera Work, the 'art' print, the arrival Robert, whicii they !

8 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

9 November 1843 to show the kind ot work they had w-hen I began to write my scripts. Untbrtunately she been doing with his process in St Andrews, Fife. This was hasn't survived to see this book, but she and the rest of six montlis before Robert opened his studio in Edinburgh Bourne's family have teen able to give valuable informa- and started his partnership with D. O. Hill. In the front tion.

of the album, carefully cut into an oval vignette, is the Despite this strange compression of time, many of our Adamsons' portrait Sir of , the optical inquiries have ended in a blank ; papers have been lost and scientist who was the link between Talbot and the Scot- negatives junked as being of no further interest. Luckily tish calotypists. He had certainly known of Talbot's there is now a growing aw areness that photographs (ire photogenic drawings as early as 1836, two-and-a-half important, often as important as written documents in years before the announcement by Daguerre which the history of any country. As a television producer who prompted Talbot finally to publish his own process. has worked mainly in the fields of art and history, I What is more, in 1836 Brewster and Talbot were already should like to encourage anyone with photographs which considering 'taking a picture' of such an imposing build- they think are of biographical, historic, or even of local ing as Warwick Castle. I am grateful to Harold White importance, to show them to a librarian or museum cura- w'ho first drew my attention to the little album, and who tor and allow them to be copied for reference, before they generously gave me an intensive briefing on Fox Talbot's sell or give away the originals. But please don't send them w'ork. Further readings ot some of the microfilms of the to me Lacock Abbey papers have filled the gaps. The great- great-grandchildren ot Fox Talbot, Janet and Anthony The series of programmes on which this book is based Burnett Brown, have kindly given us pernussion to would never have materialised without the help and quote from the correspondence and to reproduce the kindness of many people who have contributed so much album; (they were also very kind hosts to the film unit at interest and information to the project. I would like to

Lacock Abbey). acknowledge here the debt I owe to Aaron Scharf for Other new material which came to light includes the compiling and writing this book and advising on the of Dorothy Draper by Dr John Draper series; to Brian Coe, Curator ot the Museum; to which has recently been donated by his family to the the staff of the Science Museum, and in particular Dr Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and which D. B. Thomas and John Ward; and at the Royal Photo- Eugene Ostroff, the Curator of the Division of Photo- graphic Society, Professor Margaret Harker, Mrs Gail graphic History, kindly contributed to our series. Pre- Buckland, Kenneth Warr, Arthur T. Gill and Leo de viously this very early daguerreotype was known only by Freitas. a late nineteenth-century reproduction of a duplicate Apart from those mentioned in my foreword, portrait sent by Draper to Sir in 1840 and others who have given particular assistance are Mrs which had unfortunately been damaged by cleaning in Katherine Michaelson, Mrs Marion Smith, Mrs Anita V. the 1930s. This new daguerreotype is either a copy of the Mozley , Mesdamcs Henriettc andjamne Niepce, Madame original or a duplicate of the same pose. As it was kept by Christiane Roger, Colin Ford, David Travis, Dr P.

Draper himself it seems likely that this was the original; Genard, Rene Andre, E. Noel-Bouton, Professor A. it would only be human nature to send the second version Fessard, and the staff ot the Archives Photographiques, rather than the first to England to show that portraits the Print Room ot the Bibliotheque Nationale, the were possible w ith the new art. National Galleries of , the Royal Scottish Mu- Our concern with colour photography has provided seum, the Special Collections of the Library ot the Um- some interesting images not reproduced before as far as versity of Glasgow, and the London Library.

I know. There is, for example, an early autochrome, a I must also thank in the BBC Paris office, Maud Vidal study of Beatrice Webb, by her friend the enthusiastic and Gilda Jacob; and in my own office in London, the , George Bernard Shaw. There is researcher for the series, Joy Curtiss, and three hard- also the rather more professional work of Alfred Stieglitz worked assistants; Jennie Batchelor, Sara Ling and Sandy and Frank Eugene from the collection of The Art Insti- Vcre-Jones. All six have had to gather up the huge num- tute of . ber ofphotographs and I am very grateful for their patient All this history is comparatively recent. Nothing has help. My dianks, too, to Roynon Raikes, our staffphoto- brought the shormess of tirne home to me more than my grapher, and to the members ofthe film unit, in particular research on Samuel Bourne, one the of least known but Peter Sargent, cameraman, and Alan J. Cumner-Pnce, most imponant of British landscape photographers. He film editor, both of whose professional know-ledge and was trekking through the Himalayas in the 1860s, yet his interest has filtered through into this book. daughter, who was 100 years old in 1974, was still living Arm Turner : THE F

Though the invention of photography made news in 1839, it had its beginnings as

early as 18 16 in the experiments of Joseph Nicephore Nicpce. But the principles of

photography were known earlier than that - long before it became a working reality. The dream of fixing an image of nature on some surface and then carrying it away

was a necessary stimulus to the invention. The practical knowledge required for the reaUsation of photography was there already in its inchoate form in the distant past. The famous alchemist, Fabricius, had 10 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

kiown, in 1552, that the sun's rays turned a certain compound from white to black. Aristotle before him knew that light passing through a small hole will project an image of the natural world onto the side of a dark box or the wall of a darkened room. That is to say, he already understood the principle of the , the pre- cursor of our modern photographic camera. And that other essential ingredient in photography's discovery, the urge to draw the picture out of the mirror or to extract the delicate image from the dark interior of the camera obscura, is ancient too. To turn the fugitive image into a permanent physical reality was to enhance memory itself The magical notion of being able to fix the mirror's image, to lay hold of it, is the expression no doubt of a primitive instinct going

back to the first troglodyte who cast an incredulous eye on his reflection in some primeval puddle. Writers in the eighteenth century, an impressionable period for all its reputation as the age of reason, let their fancies run wild as they indulged themselves in this re- day be possible to peel off the image on a looking-glass vivification of the ancient tale of Narcissus. The most and freeze the evanescent reflection on the surface of

often cited is a proto-science-fiction writer, Tiphaignc de water. la Roche, whose book Giphantie appeared in Paris in Throughout the obscura and the

1760. It deals with the experiences of a voyager who finds many other like devices, that effigy on the retinal glass, himself on a mysterious island somewhere in Africa. In or m the prism or the viewfindcr, has never entirely ceased the home of the Governor he gazes out of the window to generate a reverence tor its magical character, and a only to behold a thoroughly incongruous scene of a wild possessiveness for the image itself One of the most vivid

sea. He is flabbergasted to discover that he is looking at a appreciations I know, of the beauty of nature thus re- picture. That image, the same as would appear on any duced, was written by Horace Walpole in 1777, only polished surface, or on water or glass, or on the retina of sixteen years after Giphantie appeared in an English edi-

the eye, had been fixed, he is told, by some mysterious tion. From the beginning ot the great age of inventions, means. A heavy, quick-drying liquid had been employed, all manner of mimetic devices appeared, some ot them

which formed a picture of the object it reflected in an contraptions of such incredible construction that one instant: becomes convinced that the means must have been quite

as important as the end. The avowed purpose of all these

They coat a piece of canvas with this material, and hold viewing- or drawing-instruments was to render in pro-

it in front of the objects they want to paint. The first jection or in reproduction a vision of nature virtually

effect on this canvas is like that produced in a mirror. indistinguishable from the real thing.

One can see there all objects, far and near, the images ot Walpole falls in love with a newly invented modifica-

which can be transmitted by light. But what a mirror tion of the camera obscura called the 'delineator . Ac-

caimot do, the canvas does by means of its viscous cording to him, that little magic box not merely dupli-

it best art of matter ; it retains the images . . . This impression of the cated nature, but exceeded in the way the

irnage is instantaneous, and the canvas is carried away the past had augmented the real world. 'Arabian tales', he at once into some dark place. An hour later the prepared called those images and their heightened effects. Even the

surface has dried, and you have a picture all the more exquisite rooms of his beloved Straw- berry Hill, with all

precious in that no work of art can imitate it, nor can it their marvellous textures and perspectives, were nuracu-

be destroyed by time ... [in this way nature] with a lously enhanced, he said, by that camera : 'It will perform precise and never-erring hand, draws upon our canvasses more wonders than electricity ... I could play with it for images which deceive the eye. forty years.' And if that tiny image in the glass appeared as the work of some benevolent and obliging geme, so This astonishing piece of prescience seems supernatural later the latent photographic image, materialising as if by fascinated photographers. itself, and it no doubt echoes the age-old pleasure in magic in the developing fluid, generation of that prophesying that by some fabulous means it would one So much so that witnessing the gradual 1

INTRODUCTION 1

phantom image in the dark room was probably more ing stream of other instruments: The Agatograph, the often than not the most profound reason for taking the Diagraph, the Hyalograph, Quarreograph, Pronopio- in tlie first place. graph, and Cayeux's Eugraph - another modification of To grasp the real quality ofthe response to the actuality the camera obscura. There were in addition the Grapliic of photography, we must try to comprehend the almost Mirror and the Periscope Camera, the Meniscus Prism maniacal frenzy of activity among inventors and every and the Universal Parallel, this last a kind ofpantographic manner of would-be inventor. All were united in an implement which appeared in 18 19. In France one such irrepressible determination to perfect a mechanical means device was advertised, in this feverish stampede to ape for achieving pictorial verisimilitude.This was ultimately nature, as 'Pantographe ou singe perfectionnc'. During to be realised in the photographic process. In an age of in- this period a Monsieur Soleil (most appropriately named) vention, he who got there tirst most often, though not produced no less than ten variations on the camera always, reaped substantial rewards in tame and fortune. obscura. Added to this torrent of visual devices were of

But frequently there was an aesthetic motivation, if we course the Panoramas and Phantasmagorias of the time; may use that term loosely - a passion to provide a way the Eidophusikon, the Dioramas and other such late through which the reproduction ofa natural image could eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century means for pro- be rendered indistinguishable from the view of nature viding illusionist entertainments and special effects on a herself large scale. They were, in spirit, the precursors of the Soon an avalanche of delineating machines was tumb- cinema. ling out ofthe workshops and garden sheds ofenthusiasts. What else but this fascination for illusion, coupled with The names of the contraptions themselves had an aura of a belief in the efficacy of the machine, could account for the poetic about them. Thus in the high period of indus- so many contrivances before the coming ofphotography ? trialisation we have a large number of improvements on, And all these culminated in the invention ot the photo- or alternatives to, the camera obscura, such as the De- graphic process itself Artists, whatever their views as to lineator, so-called. Another Delineator, Copier and Pro- the relation between actuality and poetry, the outer portionometer, a tracing device in this case, was patented world ot nature and the inner one of the mind, could in 1806. Wollaston's well-known Camera Lucida ap- hardly ignore such a barrage of instruments for drawing. peared in 1807. This instrument, frequently used by For these machines not only facilitated the delineation of artists, was simply a prism in a holder through which correct perspective and guaranteed the accuracy of scale could be seen an image of nature apparently deposited on and contour but were enchanting in themselves. These the drawing paper. Charles's Solar Megascope (1780) and devices, employing lenticular means and treated glasses, Chretien's Physionotracc (1790) were widely known at made possible a more uniform, or enriched, range of the time. There were later versions too ot yet other tones, or gave tonal guidance tor better creating the physionotraces. Varley's invention of a Graphic Tele- semblance of rotundity or sculptural form. Most ot these scope was announced m 1812. Then followed an unend- instruments were for drawing or painting; some just tor looking. And there were others, their details obscured by time, which apparently employed light-responsive chemical means to produce what may be considered as forerunners of even the earliest and inconclusive experi- ments with photography. Reynolds, Crome, Cotman and Turner, to mention only the best known, were part of a legion of artists who at least toyed with one or an- other ofthese devices. Perhaps we can now better understand the vitriol of

Thomas Carlyle's despair when he wrote in 1829 of tlie mama tor mechanical devices to strengthen every aspect

of life in that mechanical age. But Carlyle's booming pessimism perhaps obscured the poetic content in the inventive enterprises even of an era obsessed with macliinery and material wealth.

The romance of a technical vocabular)-. so evident in the captivating lexicography of drawing- and \newing-

machines, also cast its spell on those who sought an

appropriate verbal description for tlie new process of ;

12 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

photography. There is a manuscript in the hand ot Nicc- and of fate, to reincarnate m photography two essential

phore Niepce, now universally credited with being, it and timeless conditions in art manifested on the one hand not the father, then the grandfather ofphotography - the in the poetry of ambiguity, and on the other in the at- earliest surviving photograph, taken m 1827, is his. We tractiveness of the concrete. Notwithstanding the mean-

reproduce this page here, with its play of permutations ing of colour in this ccntunes-old controversy in which from Greek roots; Niepce naming the art. Vasari hrst argued the merits ot Michelangelo over Among the names used to describe the earliest photo- Titian, soon after the coming ofphotography it was once graphic processes were 'Heliograph', 'Daguerreotype', again to be manifested in the opposition of the Turner- and ''. Other methods existed also, each with its esque and Pre-Raphaelite styles. own name, but these were on the whole inconsequential not intrinsically so, but because vagaries of notoriety and then of history made them so. Some of the major pro- This little "book is not intended to be an encapsulated cesses were described in relation particularly to the dis- , nor is its purpose to elaborate on tinctive kind of image each produced. the techniques employed. Both these elements are sub-

The differences between the two most widely acknow- ordinated to one major consideration, which is to make ledged photographic processes, the daguerreotype and the mystery of photography come alive through the the calotype (an improvement of Fox Talbot's earlier enthusiasm and even the eccentricities of some of its process, photogenic drawing) are lucidly set out by Sir early practitioners. Not least, I hope to convey the perils

David Brewster, a contemporary thoroughly immersed encountered in this hazardous occupation during its in the goings-on about photography. There is an extract pioneer days, and the trials and tribulations which dog from this extraordinary document on page 52. the footsteps of almost all the photographers I deal with.

The daguerreotype had its own kind of beauty. Here, Where the opportunity has arisen I have tried to present each image was unique, a direct, positive picture, laterally those slightly peripheral events and personal musings reversed, which could only be reproduced by rephoto- which give to the history of photography a more human graphing the original plate - with the consequent loss of and intimate touch. sharpness in detail and tone. The beauty ofthe daguerreo- I concentrate largely on contemporary documents, type was that embodied in the magical content of high particularly those which reveal the less obvious motiva- illusionism, the beauty of an utter realism so uncom- tions ofthe photographers themselves. In this way, I hope promising that it seems to exceed in its descriptive detail to give greater insight to what superficially appears to be a even that which the unassisted eye could possibly take in. commonplace activity,- but which often has a more pro-

The physical structure ot the daguerreotype image is a found meaning. great quantity of minuscule globules of , con- The illustrations ought to predominate in a book of this centrated more heavily in the light areas and more kind. The photographs chosen are not only stylistically sparsely m the dark. It is because of that delicate struc- revealing, but tell us something of the photographer's or ture, literally a microscopic coalescence of spherical mir- the subject's thought processes, or convey some particu- rors, that one can evoke the ghost in a daguerreotype by lar situation or experiment in an inimitable way. I have turning the image away from the direct frontal view and avoided, wherever possible, those photographs which, allowing a myriad of shadows to transform it into a through their frequent reproduction, have become pic- negative image, not least enhancing its poetic content by torial stereotypes, and have included instead a large num-

endowing it with a fugitive and mysterious presence. ber of photographs which to my knowledge have either From a utilitarian point of view, the calotype was seldom or never before been published. I have made no

superior, for not only was it cheaper and easier to produce, attempt here to present a comprehensive picture of

as it was made on paper, but it could be multiplied any photography in its pioneer stage, but, in using as a of times for it depended on a negative. This the subjects as they appear in the television scries, there is negative, made also of paper, was rendered translucent a kind of historical unravelling of the process of photo-

(though not transparent) by oiling or waxing. And it was graphy. precisely this transluccncy, this shortcoming in the I should like most sincerely to thank both Ann Turner

method, which gave the calotype its much acclaimed and Peter Campbell for putting in my path copious broad, beautiful, artistic effects. For the fibrous structure amounts of visual and textual material. I am further-

of the paper negative interceded, softening all contours more grateful to them for the unflagging energies they

of the image, diffusing the light, and imbuing all forms expended on my behalf for their friendly acquiescence

with a suggestive power. to all (or most of) my demands, and for the great sensi-

How very provident it was of science and technique. tivity of their criticisms. THE PENCIL OF NATURE

natural ';..how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper!

And why should it not be possible? I asked myself. William Henry Fox Talbot (1844) HENRY FOXTALBOT:THE READING PHO"C3 = William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77) has the distinction of being the first per- son, on 31 January 1839, to announce his discovery of photography to the world and at the same time to make the process known. He is also distinguished for inventing the first practicable negative-positive photographic process, and for discovering, in 1840, the efficacy of the by which times were reduced to a fraction of what they had been. Talbot was a country gentle- man of comfortable means, this allowing him to pursue his twin passions for lin- : : : ;

1 6 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

guistics and scientitic experiment. He was a Fellow ot the more frequently with his own friends we should never Royal Society and for a time a Member ot Parliament. see him droop m the way wliich now so continually

In the autumn of 1833, after producing some disap- annoys us. I am inclined to think that many ofhis pointing sketches while using WoUaston's camera lucida ailments are nervous for he certainly does not look at Lake Como in Italy, he resolved, as others had betore ill. . . He has almost pronused to go next week to hmi, to hnd a way offixing the image he saw in the prism Leamington and take a picture ofWarwick Castle with without recourse to the artist's pencil. To this end he Sir David.' turned, as he had once before, to the camera obscura, to capture on a piece of paper in its focus those magical, In the spring of 1839 after the public announcement, it is evanescent images. A year later, on 12 December 1834 already clear that Talbot's photogenic contact prints have Laura Mundy, Fox Talbot's sister-in-law, wrote to reached a new stage of refmement. Talbot states: Talbot about his photographs. Though he was obviously still having great difficulties in fixing these images, the This paper, if properly made, is very useful for all document establishes that at this early date, effectively ordinary photogenic purposes. For example, nothing several years before the process was oiEcially made pub- can be more perfect than the images it gives ofleaves and lic, some kind ofphotography was possible, the 'beautiful flowers, especially with a summer sun: the light passing shadows' no doubt referring to Talbot's contact prints of through the leaves delineates every ramification of their leafand lace form nerves.*

Thank you very much for sending me such beautiful In his notebook, under the date 23 September 1840, Tal- shadows, the little drawing I think quite lovely, and bot records his experiment with gaMic acid, mixed with the verses particularly excite my imagination. I had a solution of and acetic acid, as a sensitiser. no idea the art could be carried to such perfection. I had Now he hits upon a further refinement of his technique grieved over the gradual disappearance ot those you it is a landmark in the history of photograpluc processes. gave me in the summer and am dehghted to have Talbot's new photo-sensitive mixture, 'an exciting these to supply their place in my book.' liquid' he called it, developed the latent image which reduced the required exposure time to a considerable We also know that by early 1835 Talbot had already hit degree. He called his new technique the Calotype upon the negative-positive process, however primitive the results at the time: Some very remarkable results were obtamed. Haifa minute suffices tor the Camera, the paper when removed

28 February 1835 is often perfectly blank but when kept in the dark the

In the photogenic or sciagraphic process, if the paper is picture begins to appear spotilaiieoiislY, and keeps transparent, the first drawing may sers'e as an object improving for several minutes, after which it should be to produce a second drawing in which the and washed and fixed with iod. pot [ ofpotassium]. shadows would be reversed.- Exposure to moderate light also brings out the picture and more quickly. The same exciting liquid restores

In the autumn of the following year, there is evidence to or revives old pictures on w. [Whatman] paper show that the process could already accommodate an which have worn out, or become too faint to give any itinerant photographer with a portable camera. At the more copies. Altho' they are apparently reduced to end of August or early September 1S36 Talbot's wife the state ot yellow iodide of silver ot unitorm tint, yet

Constance writes to her mother-in-law. Lady Elizabeth there is really a difference and there is a kind of latent Fielding: picture which may be then brought out.'

You are perfectly right in supposing Sir D[avid] On 8 February 1843 Lady Elizabeth Fielding, jealous of B[rewster] to pass his time pleasantly here. He wants her son's discovery, writes to Talbot's wife from Paris nothing beyond the pleasure ofconversing with Henry where she hears ot another inventor ofphotography discussing their respective discoveries and various subjects connected with science . . . Henry seems to I want him to know that there is a M. Bayard who makes possess new life and I feel certain that were he to mix photographs on paper and by and by he will be

1 Lacock Abbey Papers (LA 36-38) Sc. Mus. Microfilm.

Extracted firom the Lacock Papers. Source: Harold While. 2 'Ilie Saturday Magazine, I i Apia iSi^j. Lacock Papen. 3 Lacock Papers notebook 184O. THE PENCIL OF NATURE I?

photographs or, more accurately, pasted-in photo- graphs with an accompanying text. Talbot writes with the charming decorum of the stilted style typical of that period. Here, in his historical sketch recalling the invention of the new art, Talbot despairs at the frailty of his drawings made from the images in the camera obscura and camera lucida. But why? Gentlemen travellers ofthe time, as well

as distinguished artists, did not use such instruments only for utilitarian purposes - to save time or to guarantee a great degree of accuracy. One suspects that the more pro- found reasons had to do with the fascination for toys, and more particularly for that irresistible little image in the prism or registered on the ground glass or paper. There,

all the forms and colours in view were transformed, coalesced in reduction, and richer to the point of looking more like art than nature. Yet nature it unquestionably

was, and all the more provocative for that. A sweet

miniature, snatched from its larger context; a tiny win- dow on the world. Talbot called such images 'fairy pictures', 'All looked beautiful in the prism', and he sickened of those insipid little drawings which he, an

amateur artist, managed to extract from those magically delicate images he saw:

THE PENCIL OF NATURE of Sli )ohn Moffat: Photograph taken by artificial light In 1865 collodion. David Brewster (left) and Fox Talbot. Wet Introductory Remarks

The little work now presented to the Public is the first attempt to publish a series of plates or pictures wholly pretending he has invented it. It is true that he docs it very executed by the new art of Photogenic Drawing, badly and the paper fritters away ahiiost immediately without any aid whatever from the artist's pencil. owing to the chemical preparation he employs. But all The term 'Photography' is now so well known, that will not prevent his asserting he was the Inventor

it is perhaps superfluous ; yet, as prevent it. that an explanation of of It if Hy does not take some means to persons may stiU be unacqiuinted with the art, The people here have adopted the name of Talbotypc some even by name, its discovery being still of very recent and think it only a foolish modesty [not?] to do so words may be looked for of general universally. This has been often suggested in England date, a few explanation. by various people, and it would seem that this is the suffice, then, to say, that the plates of this work precise moment in which it ought to be adopted as a iieii' It may have been obtained by the mere action of Light upon aera is about to commence. I wish therefore it should sensitive paper. They have been formed or depicted be adopted at once in England as it is already here. by optical and chemical means alone, and without the Kalotype it is objected ne veut rien dire a ccuz quie nc one acquainted with the art of drawing. It comprerment pas le Grec' aid ofany all is needless, therefore, to say that they differ in and as widely as possible, in their origin, from The particular situation which provoked that of respects, plates of the ordinary kind, which owe their existence insight which led Fox Talbot to tlic invention of the first skill of the Artist and the Engraver. negative-positive photographic process, is corapellingly to the united what They are impressed by Nature's hand ; and set out in his book, The Pencil ofNaliire, wluch appeared they want as yet ofdelicacy and finish ofexecution in 1844 and was the first of its kind available for pur- chiefly from our want of sufficient knowledge chase by the general public. This publication, its title arises of her laws. When we have learnt more, by experience, so revealing, had a text illustrated with pasted-in respecting the formation of such pictiures, they will nearer to perfection; and 5°. doubtless be brought much 1 Ucock Papers. Sec Bayard, p. !

1 8 PIONEEKS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

though we may not be able to conjecture with any pencil with some degree ofaccuracy, though not without certainty what rank they may hereafter attain to as much time and trouble.

pictorial productions, they will surely find their own I had tried this simple method during former visits sphere of utility, both for completeness of detail and to Italy in 1823 and 1824, but found it in practice correcmess of perspective. somewhat difficult to manage, because the pressure of The Author of the present work having been so the hand and pencil upon the paper tends to shake and fortunate as to discover, about ten years ago, the displace the instrument (insecurely fixed, in all

principles and practice of Photogenic Drawing, is probability, while taking a hasty sketch by a roadside,

desirous that the first specimen of an Art, likely in all or out ofan inn window) ; and if the instrument is once

probability to be much employed in future, should be deranged, it is most difficult to get it back again, so as

published in the country where it was first discovered. to point truly in its former direction. And he makes no doubt that his countrymen will deem Besides which, there is another objection, namely, that

such an intention sufficiently laudable to induce them It baffles the skill and patience of the amateur to trace

to excuse the imperfections necessarily incident to a all the minute details visible on the paper ; so that, in

first attempt to exhibit an Art ofso great singularity, fact, he carries away with him little beyond a mere which employs processes entirely new, and having no souvenir of the scene - which, however, certaiiJy has analogy to any thing in use before. That such its value w hen looked back to, in long after years.

imperfections w ill occur in a first essay, must indeed be Such, then, was the method which I proposed to try expected. At present the Art can hardly be said to have again, and to endeavour, as before, to trace with my

advanced beyond its infancy - at any rate, it is yet in a pencil the outlines of the scenery depicted on the paper.

very early stage - and its practice is often impeded by And this led me to reflect on the inimitable beauty of doubtsand difficulties, which, with increasing knowledge, the pictures ofnature's painting which the glass of will diminish and disappear. Its progress will be more the Camera throws upon the paper in its focus - fairy rapid when more minds are devoted to its improvement, pictures, creations of a moment, and destined as rapidly

and when more of skilful manual assistance is employed to fade away.

in the manipulation ot its delicate processes; the paucity It was during these thoughts that the idea occurred if of which skilled assistance at the present moment the to mc . . . how charming it would be it were possible Author finds one of the chiet difficulties in his way. to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper

Brie/Historical Sketch ofthe liweution of the Art And why should it not be possible? I asked myself

It may be proper to preface these specimens ot a new The picture, divested of the ideas which accompany it, Art by a brief account of the circumstances whjch and considered only in its ultimate nature, is but a

preceded and led to the discovery of it. And these were succession or variety of stronger lights thrown upon nearly as follows. one part of the paper, and of deeper shadows on another.

One of the first days of the month of October 1833, Now- Light, where it exists, can exert an action, and, in

I was amusing myself on the lovely shores of the Lake of certain circumstances, does exert one sufficient to cause Como, in Italy, taking sketches with WoUaston's changes in material bodies. Suppose, then, such an

Camera Lucida, or rather I should say, attempting to action could be exerted on the paper ; and suppose the

it. In that case surely take them : but with the smallest possible amount of paper could be visibly changed by success. For when the eye was removed from the some effect must result having a general resemblance

prism - in which all looked beautiful - I found that the to the cause which produced it : so that the variegated faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper scene of light and shade might leave its image or melancholy to behold. impression behind, stronger or weaker on different parts

After various fruitless attempts, I laid aside the of the paper according to the strength or w'eakness of

instrument and came to the conclusion, that its use the light wliich had acted there. required a previous knowledge of drawing, which Such was the idea that came into my mind. Whether

unfortunately I did not possess. it had ever occurred to me before amid floating

I then thought of trying again a method which 1 had philosophic visions, I know not, though I rather think tried many years before. This method was, to take a It must have done so, because on this occasion it struck Camera Obscura, and to throw the image of the objects mc so forcibly. I was then a wanderer in classic Italy, on a piece of transparent tracing paper laid on a pane and, ofcourse, unable to commence an inquiry ofso again of glass in the focus of the instrument. On this paper the much difficulty : but, lest the thought should

objects are distinctly seen, and can be traced on it with a escape me between that time and my return to England, THE PENCIL OF NATURE Ip

portions ofthe paper were observed wnting, and also ofsuch occasions certain I made a careful note of it in sunshine much more rapidly than the to to blacken in the I thought would be most likely experiments as were generally rest. These more sensitive portions realise it, if it were possible. or confines of the part that had the nitrate situated near the edges And since, according to chemical writers, over with the brush. sensitive to the aoion of been washed of silver is a substance peculiarly to the cause of this instance, After much consideration as resolved to make a trial of it, in the first light, I bordering portions appearance, I conjectured that these whenever occasion permitted on my return to England. of salt, and that, books, might have absorbed a lesser quantity I knew the fact from chemical But although made them more by for some reason or other, this had that mtratc of silver was changed or decomposed This idea was easily put to the test experiment tried, and sensitive to the light. Light, still 1 had never seen the of paper was moistened with action was a rapid of experiment. A sheet therefore I had no idea whether the solution of salt than usual, and when dry, however, of the utmost a much weaker or a slow one ; a point, silver. This paper, when it was washed with nitrate of since, if it were a slow one, my theory importance, a far exposed to the sunshine, immediately manifested might prove but a philosophic dream. than I had witnessed the greater degree of sensitiveness Such were, as neariy as I can now remember, surface turning black uniformly of this theory, before, the whole of its reflections which led me to the invention at once and "beyond all question rapidly : establishing impelled me to explore a path so deeply and and which first produced the important fao, that a lesser quantity of salt hidden among nature's secrets. And the numerous circumstance was unexpcaed, whatever a greater effect. And, as this researches which were afterwards made - the cause why - it afforded a simple explanation of success may be thought to have attended them important result, in value previous inquirers had missed this think, admit of a comparison with the cannot, I namely, because their experiments on chlonde of silver, of the first and original idea. with wrong proportions of firom my they had always operated In January 1834, 1 returned to England in order to produce to salt and silver, using plenty of salt contmental tour, and soon afterwards I determined whereas what was required (it was test ofexperiment, a perfect chloride, put my theories and speculations to the have a deficiency ofsalt, in order foundation. now manifest) was, to and see whether they had any real (perhaps it should of to produce an imperfect chlonde, or Accordingly 1 began by procuring a solution subcliloride of silver. of it be called) a nitrate of silver, and with a brush spread some of salt from dried. So far was a free use or abundance upon a sheet of paper, which was afterwards action of light on the paper, that on the sunshine, I was promoting the When this paper was exposed to the almost destroyed it: slowly contrary it greatly weakened and disappointed to find that the effect was very so much so, that a bath of salt water was used produced in comparison with what I had anticipated. as a fixing process to prevent the fiinher silver, freshly preapitated subsequently I then tried the chloride of found action of light upon sensitive paper. and spread upon paper while moist. This was subchloridc by the darkish This process, of the formation ofa no better than the other, turning slowly to a of a very weak solution of salt, having been when exposed to the sun. use violet colour was found and discovered in the spnng of 1834, no difficulty Instead of taking the chloride already formed, very pleasing images ofsuch proceeded in the in obtaining distinct and spreading it upon paper, I then strong things as leaves, lace, and other flat objects of following way. The paper was first washed with a forms and outlines, by exposing them to it was washed complicated solution of salt, and when this was drys of silver the light of the sun. again with nitrate of silver. Ofcourse, chloride dried, the leaves, &c. were of this The paper being well was thus formed in the paper, but the result pressed down spread upon it, and covered with a glass experiment was almost the same as before, the chloride when the being tightly, and then placed in the sunshine; and not being apparently rendered more sensitive by paper grew dark, the whole was carried into the shade, formed in this way. offthe paper, were times, and the objects being removed from Similar experiments were repeated at various very perfectly and changing the found to have left their images in hopes of a better result, frequently beautifully impressed or delineated upon it. proportions employed, and sometimes using the nitrate But when the sensitive paper was placed in the focus of silver before the salt, &c. &c. object, as a were often ofa Camera Obscura and directed to any In the course of these experiments, which moderate space oftime, that the building for instance, during a rapidly performed, it sometimes happened upon the paper and of as an hour or two, the effect produced brush did not pass over the whole of the paper, to e.\lubit such a satisfactory results. On some was not strong enough course this produced irregularity in the 20 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

picture of the building as had been hoped tor. The outhnc was not only less sensitive than the chloride, but that it of the root and ot the chimneys, &c. against the sky was not sensitive at ^U to light ; indeed that it was was marked enough ; but the details ot the architecture absolutely insensible to the strongest sunshine : retaining were feeble, and the parts m shade were left cither Its original tint (a pale straw colour) for any length of blank or nearly so. The sensitiveness ot the paper to time unaltered in the sun. This fact showed me how light, considerable as it seemed in some respects, was little dependance was to be placed on the statements of therefore, as yet, evidently insufficient tor the purpose chemical writers in regard to this particular subject, of obtaining pictures with the Camera Obscura ; and and how necessary it was to trust to nothing but actual the course of experiments had to be again renewed in experiment : for although there could be no doubt that hopes of attaining to some more important result. Davy had observed what he described under certain

The next interval of sufficient leisure which I tound circumstances - yet it was clear also, that what he had for the prosecution of this inquiry, was during a observed was some exception to the rule, and not the residence at Geneva in the autumn ot 1834. The rule Itself. In tact, further inquiry showed me that Davy experiments of the previous spring were then repeated must have observed a sort of subiodidc in which the and varied in many ways ; and having been struck with iodine was deficient as compared with the silver: for, a remark of Sir H. Davy's which I had casually met with as in the case of the cliloride and subchloridc the former

- that the iodiile of silver was more sensitive to light than IS much less sensitive, so between the iodide and the chloride, I resolved to make trial ot the iodide. Great subiodide there is a similar contrast, but it is a much more was my surprise on making the experiment to find just marked and complete one. the contrary of the fact alleged, and to see that the iodide However, the fact now discovered, proved ot immediate utility; for, the iodide of silver being tound Henry Fox Talbot: Photogenic d of leaves (undated) to be insensible to light, and the chloride being easily converted into the iodide by immersion in iodide of

potassium, it followed that a picture made with the

chloride could he fixed by dipping it into a bath of the alkaline iodide.

This process ot fixation was a simple one, and it was sometimes very successful. The disadvantages to which

It was liable did not manifest themselves until a later period, and arose from a new and unexpected cause,

namely, that when a picture is so treated, although it is permanently secured against the darkeniug effect of the

solar rays, yet it is exposed to a contrary or ivhitening

effect from them ; so that after the lapse ofsome days the dark parts of the picture begin to fade, and gradually

the whole picture becomes obliterated, and is reduced to the appearance of a uniform pale yellow sheet of paper. A good many pictures, no doubt, escape this

fate, but as they all seem liable to it, the fixing process by iodine must be considered as not sufficiently certain to be retained in use as a photographic process, except when employed with several careful precautions which

it would be too long to speak of in this place.

During the brilliant summer of i S3 5 in England I made new attempts to obtain pictures ot buildings with the Camera Obscura; and having devised a process which gave additional sensibility to the paper, viz. by

giving it repeated alternate washes ot salt and silver,

and using it in a moist state, I succeeded in reducing the time necessary for obtaining an image with the Camera Obscura on a bright day to ten minutes. But these pictures, though very pretty, were very small, being quite miniatures. Some were obtained ot a larger size. THE PENCIL OF NATURE 21

less rapid change was not very rapid : it was niucii but they required much patience, nor did they seem so This than the changes ofsome of the sensitive papers which perfect as the smaller ones, for it was difficult to keep therefore, 1 had been in the habit of employing, and the instrument steady for a great length of time pointing af"ter having admired the beauty of this new at the same object, and the paper being used moist was phenomenon, I laid the specimens by, for a time, to often acted on irregularly. see whether they would preserve the same appearance, During the three following years not much was added or would undergo any further alteration. to previous knowledge. Want of suificicnt leisure for Such was the progress which I had made in this experiments was a'great obstacle and hindrance, and I inquiry at the close of the year 1 838, when an event almost resolved to publish some account of the Art in occurred in the scientific world, which in some degree the imperfect state in which it then was. yet frustrated the hope with which 1 had pursued, during However curious the results which 1 had met with, things must nearly five years, this long and complicated, but I felt convinced that much more important interesting scries of experiments - the hope, namely, ot remain behind, and that the clue was still wanting to being the first to announce to the world the existence this labyrinth of facts. But as there seemed no immediate of the New Art - wliich has been since named prospect of further success, 1 thought of drawing up a Photography. short account of what had been done, and presenting I allude, of course, to the publication in the month ot it to the Royal Society. 1839, of the great discovery of M. Dagucrre, of However, at the close of the year 1838,1 discovered a January the photographic process which he has called the remarkable fact of quite a new kind. Having spread a Daguerreotype. I need not speak of the sensation created piece of silver leaf on a pane of glass, and thrown a in all parts of the world by the first announcement of particle of iodine upon it, I observed that coloured this splendid discovery, or rather, of the fact of its rings formed themselves around the central particle, having been made {for the actual method made use ot especially if the glass was shghtly warmed. The coloured formation was kept secret for many months longer). This great rings I had no difficulty in attributing to the causes: first, to ot silver but and sudden celebrity was due to two of infinitely thin layers or strata of iodide ; the beauty of the discovery itself: secondly, to the zeal a most unexpected phenomenon occurred when the and enthusiasm of Arago, whose eloquence, animated silver plate was brought into the light by placing it near by private friendship, delighted in extolling the inventor a window. For then the coloured rings shortly began quite of this new art, sometimes to the assembled science ot to change their colours, and assumed other and thin the French Academy, at other times to the less scientific unusual tints, such as are never seen in the 'colours oj judgment, but not less eager patriotism, ot the Chamber phnei'. For instance, the part of the silver plate which of Deputies. at first shone with a pale yellow colour, was changed daylight. But, having brought this brief notice ot the early to a dark olive green when brought into the

Abbey, with Talbot's inscription. August 1835. lest sur nng negative taken in the south gallery. Lacock Henry Fox Talbot : The earl Photogenic drawing. 22 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Henry Fox Talbot: Calotypes of his wife. Constance (above),

10 October 1 840, taken within days of discovering the faster days of the Photographic Art to the important epoch ot process, his daughter. Rosannund (above right), and an unknown the announcement ot the Daguerreotype, I shall defer man (below). All taken with a 'mousetrap' camera. the subsequent history of the Art to a future number

oftliis work.

Some time previously to the period of which I have now

been speakmg, I met with an account of some researches on the action of Light, by Wedgwood and Sir H. Davy,

which, until then, I had never heard of Their short

memoir on this subject was published in i Xo2 in the first

volume of the Journal of the Royal Institution. It is curious and interesting, and certainly establishes their

claim as the first inventors of the Photographic Art,

though the actual progress they made in it was small. They succeeded, indeed, in obtaining impressions from Wedgwood, yet the improvements were so great in all

respects, that I think the year 1839 may fairly be considered as the real date of the birth ot the

Photographic Art, that is to say, its first public disclosure to the world.

There is a point to which I wish to advert, which respects the execution of the following specimens. As

far as respects the design, the copies are almost facsimiles

of each other, but there is some variety in the tint which they present. This arises from a twofold cause. In the

first place, each picture is separately formed by the light of the sun, and in our climate the strength of the sun's

rays is exceedingly variable even in serene weather. THE PENCIL OF NATURE 23

When clouds intervene, a longer time is ofcourse Henry Fo>: Talbot Photomicrograph of plant secti allowed for the impression of a picture, but it is not possible to reduce this to a matter of strict and accurate calculation.

The other cause is the variable quality of the paper employed, even when furnished by the same manufacturers - some differences in the fabrication and in the sizing of the paper, known only to themselves, and perhaps secrets of the trade, have a considerable influence on the tone of colour which the picture ultimately assumes.

These tints, how ever, might undoubtedly be brought nearer to uniformity, if any great advantage appeared likely to result : but, several persons of taste having been consulted on the point, viz. which tint on the whole deserved a preference, it was found that their opinions offered nothing approaching to unanimity, and therefore, as the process presents us spontaneously witli a variety of sliadcs of colour, it was thought best to admit whichever appeared pleasing to the eye, widiout aiming at an uniformity which is hardly attainable. And with these brief observations I commend the pictures to the indulgence of the Gentle Reader. I.I HENRY FOX TALBOT: NELSONS COLUMN BEING CONSTRUCTE:. TALBOT: INTERIOR. LACOCK I 2 HENRY FOX

1.5 HENRY FOX

1.7 HENRY fOX IAlBGT, BRICKLAYERS

THE MIRROR WITH A MEMORY

precision to concentrate on three things: 1) to give greater I am going to the tones; and finally, the representation of the objects; 2) to transpose 3) least easy; but as you rightly said, to fix them, which is not going to be the patience, one suc- Mon cher ami, we are not lacking in patience, and with Niepce (1816) ceeds in the end. Joseph-Nicephore CHARLES FONTAYNE AND W. S. PORTER; PANORAMA OF EIGHT OF THE CINCINNATI WATERFRONT HE MIRROR WITH A MEMORY

daguerreotype of mformation about the early One of the most startHng p.cccs of Japan world is that, in the opening up and us rapid dissemination around the daguerrcotypist. Perry had on board a professional in the early 1850s, Admiral of an extraordinary recording executed by a The lUustranon overleaf is a copy Perry s the famous Black Ship Scroll. It shows Japanese pnntmaker. It appears in Da,an-ji the portrait of a courtesan at daguerreotypist and two assistants takmg extremely daring act on the part of the sitter. temple in Shimoda. This was an :

36 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

tor it was profoundly believed diat a portrait ot any kind France, can take the credit tor being the true inventor ot

was an inducement to the soul to shift its abode troni the the tirst practicable, though problematical, photographic reality to the representation, and process, twenty-three years before photography was particularly was soon considered by the superstitious officially invented. tantamount to murder. Niepce wrote a great many letters, mostly to his

Considering the excitement caused in 1S39 by the brother Claude who lived first in Paris then, till his death

invention ot photography, it may come as a surprise that in 1827, with a bargebuilder in Hammersmith. This cor-

a primitive, but workable, photographic process using a respondence, which can only be touched upon here,

camera was devised as early as 1 8 1 6 and what is even more presents a somewhat tragic picture of a family of good

astomshing is that it had been attempted to produce those standing, struggling through the vicissitudes of revolu- photographs in natural colour.' We know that other tion and restoration to wrest from an unstable world photographic teclmiques had been evolved b)' more than whatever security the commercial exploitation ot their one experimenter even earlier than that. But they neither inventions could provide.

involved the use of a camera, nor were they in any way I April 1816. Nicephore writes to Claude in Paris: conclusive. So Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833), a

dilettante inventor (dilettante in the best nineteenth- The experiments I have done up till now make me

century sense) , who lived a rural existence in provincial believe that, as far as the principal effect, my process will

work w-ell ; but I need to arrive at some way ot fixing I It IS astonishing, but quite possible, that Niepce attempted to protiuce the colour; this is what is concerning me at the moment, those photographs m natural colour. In a later letter to hjs brother Claude, after visiting Daguerre in 1 827, he describes Daguerre's partial and It's the thing which is the most difficult. Without success in registering natural colours chemically, but holds out both that it wouldn't be worth anything, and I w ould have for Daguerre and himself little hope of overcoming such an intractable to tackle it another way.' process. See Victor Fouque, La Virile sur I'iufciilion de /ii photographic, Paris 1867. 22 April. He breaks his lens and waits for another before Illustration by E, Morin from "The Legend of the Daguerreotype' by Champfieur, continuing with his experiments. 5 May 1816. During a visit to Chalons he gets another

lens and adapts his camera obscura to take it (Isidore is his son)

Niepce Letters 1816, Originals in Chaloil-siir-Sailue Public Library. Pubhshed.

Unknown Japanese Artist: The Black Ship Scroll - photographers from Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan taking a Daguerreotype of a courtesan. I8S3-4,

.-£- - >^rf^' THE MIRROR WITH A MEMORY 37

the big Box. To get the best since between the Baguier and here on Wednesday evening ; but Wc returned shadow. idea of the effect, you must put yourself in time has always been fully occupied which then the opaque and put yourself and (Place the prim on something hasn't left me free to follow up my experiments, print will alter against the light.) I expect this type of I'm maddened because they interest me a great deal, kept from contact with the in course of time if it's not and one's got to drop it from time to time to go which is light, because of the action of the nitric acid bore I would prefer, rounds or receive people here : It's a ; I'm afraid, too, that it will have been wilderness. Not being able not neutralised. I can tell you, to be in the the coach. This is nothing broken, damaged by the jostlings of to use my camera obscura when my lens was (which I test: but if the results were a little stronger Isidore's Baguier, but a I made an artificial eye with and above all if the ordering of the tones lines in a grid. hope to get), which is a little box with i6 or i8 that the illusion would be wliich, as was reversed, I believe Luckily I had a lens from a solar microscope, complete. These two prints were made in the room \ou know, belonged to our grand-father Barrault. I bigger than the size where I work, and the field was no found one of these little was exactly the right I have read in Abbe NoUet that to itselt of the window sash. , and the image of the objects defmed a greater number of distant objects, field of lines in be able to produce in a very sharp and precise way on a 1 3 lenses of a greater focal length, and to put one where I work; one needs diameter. I put the apparatus in the room more glass in the lens housing. Although they are opposite the pigeon-cote, and with the sash wide open. to keep these two prints you know, hardly worth it, if you want I made the experiment by the method to wrap them in grey paper and put the paper all the part you have only ; and I saw on the white Mon cher ami on window, whole thing in a book. I am going to concentrate of the pigeon-cote which can be seen from the : i) to give greater precision to the were lit less three things — and a faint picture ot the sash-bars which objects; to transpose the tones; see the representation of the 2) brilliantly than the objects outside. You can fix them, which is not going to be the the pigeon-cote 3) and finally, to effects ofthe light in the representation of but as you rightly said, Mon cher ami, we is a test piece least easy; and as far as the frame of the wmdow. This lacking in patience, and with patience, one the object glass are not which is still very unfinished ; but end. If 1 am lucky enough to perfect possibility of drawing succeeds in the picture is extremely small. The I shan't forget to send you new well proved and this same process, in this way, seems to me to be pretty ; samples as a return for the lively interest you would process, I will rush to let I succeed in perfecting my if to certainly take in something which could be so useful you know in return for the Uvely interest you wish which we would reap great advanugc. there are great the arts, and from so much to show me. I have no illusions; [but with] difficulties, above all in fixing the colours; 28 May 1816. work and a great deal of patience one could win the ground through. What you foresaw has happened : to send you four new prints, 2 big and objects are white, or 1 am hastening of the picture is Ijlack, and the are sharper and more 2 little that 1 have made which the background. I believe such a rather lighter than of due to a very simple method w hich consists that I have seen precise method of painting is not unknown, and the diameter ot the lens w ith a disc of pierced rest it would not be reducing done in this way ; for the engravings receives cardboard. In this w ay as the inside of the box impossible to change the ordering of the tones; even on becomes sharper, and its outlines curious to less li^ht, the image point I have several theories wliich I am tliat stronger. You as w ell as its lights and darks are much check. by can appreciate this from the roofof the pigeon-cote, sashes - you can the angle of its wall, by the window 1816. 19 May transparent in see the sash bar - even the windows seem places. In short the paper records exactly the letter of the 14th which some I hastening to reply to your am it all ; it you cannot sec which gave picture of the object depicted and we received the day before yesterday, and the image of the object on a single that distinctly, it's because us a great deal of pleasure. I am writing you appears as it would made represented is very small, the object half-sheet because Mass this morning and a visit from a distance. It follows from this, Morteuil have left if it were viewed this evemng to M. and Madame de one w ould need two glasses in the lens not to increase the as I told you. that me hardly any time ; and secondly, objects conveniently and to project a it two to record distant weight of my letter too much, as I am adding to sometliing else again. wide area on the "retina' ; but this is prints made by the process you know about. The reverse, the bam, or the The pigeon-cote has been taken in smallest was from the Baguier, and the other from roof the bam is on the left instead ot being is half-way rather the of Box which I have described to you, which 38 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Joseph Nicephore Niepce: View from his study window (Summer 1827). The first view from nature through acameraobscura to be fixed permanently. on the right. The white mass to the right of the than the two others where the outlines of the objects pigeon-cote above the Hght track which one can only are very well developed ; this is a result of my having see partially (but this is the way it is depicted on the closed the hole in the card covering the lens too much. paper by the reflexion of the image), that's the tree of There would seem to be ratios from which one must white butter-pears which is a good deal further off; not stray, and I have not yet been able to find the best. and the black splodge at the top of the peak, is an When the lens is left clear, the print one gets seems very opetiing that can be seen between the branches. That misty, and the picture recorded takes on that kind of shadow on the right marks out the roofofthe bake-house look because the objects are not so sharp and seem in which seems lower than it ought to be, because the some way to lose themselves in the haze.

Boxes are placed at about 5 feet above the floor. Finally,

Mon cher ami, those little white spots dotted in above From 1826, until his death on 5 July 1833, Niepce took the roof of the barn, are the branches of trees in the part in an edgy and clandestine correspondence with his orchard which are visible, and so are represented on the most obvious competitor, Louisjacques Mande Daguerre retina. The effect would be all the more striking, if as (1787-185 1). So fearful w-erc they that the secret of their

I told you, or rather, as I have no need to tell you, if processes might be purloined while they struggled to

the order of the darks and lights could be reversed ; this perfect a more efficient method, that they made use of a is what I must concentrate on before trying to fix the cryptic numerology, a prearranged code, which ludi- colours, and it is not easy. Up till now I have only taken crously punctuates their letters. After Niepce died, the picture of the pigeon-cote in order to make a Daguerre earned on, mostly by himself uhimately to comparison between the prints. You will find that one hit upon his own, chemically idiosyncratic, technique. of the large ones and the two small ones are fainter Daguerre was a well-known scenic painter of large- : ;

THE MIRROR WITH A MEMORY 39

scale illusionist entertainments, for which he frequently French phonetic Niepce's employed the camera obscura. He hit upon the idea of eipiivalenl translation photography about eight years after Niepce's tirst experi- c Eixcljv (eikon) image, symbol, ments, devoting himselfalmost obsessively to the difficult representation task of making his process workable. About 1826 he got description; portrait wind of Niepce's activities and succeeded, though not j TrapoCTTaois (parastasis) representation, show, without difficulty, in elbowing his way into the confi- the act ofshowing dence of the inventor from Chalon. Thus, on 14 Decem- as representing ber 1 829, began the uneasy partnership which terminated - g c*l9tl5 alethc true ; real with the death of Nicpce, leaving Daguerre to carry on in ineffectual consultation with Niepce's son, Isidore. This makes with

Dagucrre's first letters to Niepce were treated with the 1 Physautographie a b c Phusis, autc, graphe - greatest suspicion. These letters have not survived, but 2 Physautotypc a b d Phusis, aute. Typos - here is part of Niepce's letter of early February 1827, 3 Iconotauphyse - (sic) eba Eikon, autc, Phusis - addressed to an engraver named Lemaitrc, inquiring 4 Paratauphyse-(sic) Jb a Parastasis, aute, Phusis is - whether or not Daguerre known to him 5 Alcthophyse- _^ a alethes, Phusis 6 Phusalethotype - a gd Phusis, alethes. Typos -

Having been told, I have no idea how, of the object of my experiments, this gentleman wrote to me last year Thai's to say in January, to let nic know that he himself had been 1 Painting by nature herself occupied with the same object for a considerable time. 2 Copy by nature herself

He asked me if I had been more successful than he in Portrait by nature herself 3 Roughly these efforts. On the one hand, if one is to believe what 4 To show nature herself he says, he has already obtained some very surprising 5 Real nature results. On the other, he asks me whether I believe the 6 True copy from nature thing is possible. 1 need not tell you that I was surprised by this incoherence of thought, to say the least. I was ^ ", Nature herself therefore all the more careful and reserved in what I told ptiusautej him, but still I wrote him in a civil manner so as to elicit a reply. This I've received only today, which is to AutophuscI Copy by nature say after an interval of over a year, and he writes only AutophyseJ to find out how much I've progressed and asks it I w'ould .' send him a picture . . Here is one of Dagucrre's last letters to Niepce, pcnisting in the truncated style of a conspiratorial communique. But eventually, due largely to Daguerre's persistence, Niepce died only a few months later: Niepce's suspicions faded and a legal parmership was formed. By 1832 victory seemed so near that Niepce sat Paris 19 Apnl 1833 down and played with a number of Greek compounds m Mon clier Monsieur Niepce, a game ofdevising an appropriate designation for the new You will consider me very slack but it was impossible for me to reply earlier, my painting hasn't Ictt me a free

moment, I have been so busy I haven't even had time

French phonetic Niepce's to uncork the bottles you sent me. I am amazed that

equivalent translation you could only get tlic 54th part as residue, but it this (phusis) nature stuff works out a little expensive you have to take into b auTTI (ante) itself account that only very little is needed to cover a plate. c ypa9Ti (graphe) writing; painting; You will have been surprised not to have got the glass picture tilings back earlier but as the awful weather persisted

(typos) (esbarquej; sign; I guessed they would not be urgendy needed ; also

imprint; trace; apart from that I was thinking of rigging something tor

image; etiigy; the 13,' but the idea is to simplify ; besides it's only model applicable to very small sized plates.

1 Fouque, op. cit.* '18', 2 Kravets. Niepce Papers, Moscow 1944. obscura ; for silver plate. 40 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

It consists of completely rearranging the copper

fitting of the 1 3 ; it's the plate that holds the tube that has to be screwed on the other way so that the tube

goes into the 13 ; the glass which is not touched will

turn back naturally with the whole fitting ; the concave

part stays on the side of the which itself is between the glass and the 18 and the convex part of

the lens is facing the subject. By this arrangement the

intensity of the light is increased at least by half as much again, and m consequence the speed [of exposure], but as

there is only the centre clear you do not need more than

a 5 inch deep case to get a range more or less like that

of the smallest drawing boxes. I think that the case ot

6 inch size, rearranged, will take the biggest ones,

though less easily than the 5 inch size for the small.'

The news of the invention ofphotography was first made public at the beginning of 1839. A vast amount of covcr-

I Niepce Papers, op. cit., Moscow.

Sabatier-Blot: Louis Mande Daguerre. RIGHT J, Jacques Daguerreotype, THE MIRROR WITH A MEMORY 4I

age was given to this modern miracle. The following is unluckily moved its head during the short operation;

an excerpt from Tliv Literary G(i::ette in London tor 12 the animal is without a head in the design. Trees arc

January, citing the Gazette de France, and printed under very well represented ; but their colour, as it seems, the heading "Fine Arts': hinders the solar rays from producing their image as quickly as that of houses, and other objects of a difTerent colour. This causes a difiiculiy for landscape, because FINE ARTS there is a certain fixed point of perfection for trees, and

The Dagiierotype another for all objects the colours of which arc not green.

Paris, 6th January, 1839 The consequence is, that when the houses arc finished, We have much pleasure in announcing an important the trees are not, and when the trees arc finished, the discovery made by M. Dagucrre, the celebrated painter houses are too much so. of the Diorama. This discovery seems like a prodigy. Inanimate nature, architecture, arc the triumph of the

It disconcerts all the theories of science in light and apparatus which M. Daguerre means to call after his

, and, if borne out, promises to make a revolution own name - Dagiierotype. A dead spider, seen in the

in the arts of design. solar microscope, is finished with such detail in the M. Daguerre has discovered a method to fix the design, that you may study its anatomy, with or without images which are represented at the back of a camera a magnifying glass, as if it were nature itself; not a fibre,

obscura ; so that these images arc not the temporary not a nerve, but you may trace and examine. For a few reflection of the object, but their fixed and durable hundred francs travellers may, perhaps, be soon able to impress, which may be removed from the presence ot procure M. Daguerre's apparatus, and bring back views those objects like a picture or an engraving. of the finest monuments, and of the most delightful Let our readers fancy the fidelity ofthe image ofnature scenery of the whole world. They will see how far

figured by the camera obscura, and add to it an action their pencils and brushes are from the truth ot the

of the solar rays which fixes this image, with all its Daguerotypc. Let not the draughtsman and the painter,

gradations of lights, shadows, and middle tints, and they however, despair - the results obtained by M. Daguerre will have an idea of the beautiful designs, with a sight are very different from their works, and, in many cases, of which M. Daguerre has gratified our curiosity. M. cannot be a substitute for them. The effects of this new Daguerre cannot act on paper; he requires a plate of process have some resemblance to line engraving and

polished metal. It was on copper that we saw several mezzotinto, but are much nearer to the latter : as for points of the Boulevards, Pont Marie, and the environs, truth, they surpass everything.

and many other spots, given with a truth which Nature I have spoken of the discovery oiJy as it regards art.

alone can give to her works. M. Daguerre shews you If what I have heard is correct, M. Daguerre's discovery imporunt the plain plate of copper : he places it, in your presence, tends to nothing less than a new theory on an

in his apparatus, and, in three minutes, if there is a bright branch of science. M. D. generously owns that the first

summer sun, and a few more, if autumn or winter idea of his process was given him, fifteen years ago, by

weaken the power of its beams, he takes out the metal M. Nieps, of Chalons-sur-Saonc ; but in so imperfect a

and shews it to you, covered with a charming design state, that it has cost him long and persevering labour representing the object towards which the apparatus to attain the object.

was turned. Nothing remains but a short mechanical H. Gaucheraud.'

operation - ot washing, I believe - and the design, which has been obtained in so few moments, remains unalterably fixed, so that the hottest sun cannot destroy

Messrs. Arago, Biot, and Von Humboldt, have ascertained the reality of this discovery, which excited

their admiration ; and M. Arago will, in a few days,

make it known to the Academy of Sciences.

I add some further particulars. Nature in motion cannot be represented, or at least not without great difficulty, by the process in question. In one of the views

of the Boulevards, of which I have spoken, all that was From the Gazelle de France of 6 January 1839, which pre-empted the docs not appear in the design; ot walking or moving olfici.il announcement made by Francois Araco at a mccnnc ot" the two horses in a hackney coach on the stand, one Academic des Sciences on 7 January.

ERRE: BOULEVARD DU TEMPLE 2,3 DR JOHN DRAPER: HIS SISTER. DOROTHY DRAPER

2.4 HENRY FITZ JUNIOR: SUSAN FITZ 2-S SOUTHWORTH AND HAWES: DANIEL WEBSTER

S 2.6 SOUTHWORTH AND HAWES: CHIEF JUSTICE LEMUEL ^: DANIEL RUNGE AND HIS WIFE

W. A. KRUSS AND E. J. KROSS (ABOVE DF THE HAMBURG-SKETCH CLUB (BELOW). COLLECTOR : THE BUTTERFLY 2.8 UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER 2.9 UNKNOVl '

211 DR ALEXANDER JOHN ELLIS VENICE 2 '2 G. N, BARNARD, BURNING MtLLS AT OSV.EGC. NE'vV ^OR-'., •rS3

SUN PICTURES

The photographic picture enclosed was mode on 24 October 1839 in 18 minutes — from 11 o clock in the morning to 11:18, by the following process:

Dip the paper in a weak solution of sodium chloride: when it is completely dry, brush this paper with silver nitrate dissolved in six times its weight of water. With the paper almost dry and protected from all action of light, expose it to the fumes of iodine, then in the camera obscure, then to mer- cury, as in M. Daguerre s process, and finish by washing it in a solution of hyposulphite of soda. (1839) 4

^^-s.j^£±*&r,i^,'zrj&b£,

^^^'C^.^^ ^ ^// ^^-:.

OR JOHN AOAMSON AND ROBERT ADAMSON: PAGES FROM AN ALBUM OF CALOTYPES TAKEN AT ST ANDREWS. FIF SUN PICTURES

The idea of photography occurred to many people more or less at the same time.

In the melee to establish priority for its invention, a torrent of claims poured forth, some entirely without foundation, some half-baked, and others quite legitimate.

Among this last group, their voices drowned by the trumpeting of others, was one of the forgotten men of 1839, Hippolytc Bayard, inventor of the direct positive process. He provided an ironic caption to his self-portrait, the image of a 'Drowned Man': : ! ; " ; :

56 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

about It being communicated and t' ..t from this it would be possible, more or less to make use of my researches, and to detract from the honour of my

discovery, I don't think I should delay any longer in

making known the method which I have found successful.

There is no time for me to give the necessary details,

but if the Academy will permit me, I will complete the

account at another session. Here briefly is what my process consists of: ordinary writing-paper having been prepared according to M. Talbot's method, and

blackened by exposure to light, I dip it for several

seconds in a solution ofpotassium iodide ; then,

spreading it on a slate, I put it in the back of a camera

obscura. When the draw ing has taken shape, I wash the paper in a solution ofhyposulphite of soda, and then

in w'arm clean water, and dry it in darkness.'

Hippolyte Bayard: Self-portrait as a drowned man. ISOctober Having heard of Talbot's discovery of the latent image IS-W. Positive paper process. (p. 14), Bayard even laid claim to that, and may indeed

have had a right to it

The corpse ot the gentleman you sec above this, is that

of Monsieur Bayard, inventor of the process, the At the last session of the Academy [8 February 1 1 S4 J, marvellous results of which, you are about to see, or you M. Biot read a letter of M. Talbot, in which this arc going to see. To my certain knowledge, this physicist speaks of a method, which he doesn't divulge,

ingenious and indefatigable experimenter has devoted to make a photographic impression visible which is about three years to perfecting this invention. The invisible when it leaves the camera obscura. For some

Academy, the King, and all those who have seen his time I have known ofthree ways which lead to this drawings (which he himself considers tentative) have result. Permit me. Sir, to make one known, and when

admired them, just as you yourselves are enjoying them lime has permitted me to try the two others, 1 will have at this moment. The Government which has been only the honour to communicate them to you.

too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can Having prepared a paper with potassium bromide and

do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch then silver nitrate, it is e.xposed m the camera obscura

has drowned lumself. Oh ! the vagaries of human life srill ii'rt for several minutes. Taken out and looked at Artists, intellectuals, the newspapers have been interested by the light of a candle, one can see no trace on this

in him for some time and yet today - when he has paper of the image which is nevertheless printed on it;

already been on show at the Morgue for several days - to make it appear all that is required is to expose the no one has recognised or claimed him. Ladies and paper to vapour of mercury as in M. Daguerrc's process.

gentlemen, pass on to other things for fear that your It soon blackens everywhere the light has worked on the

sense ofsmell be offended because, as you can see, the preparation. It is hardly necessary to remark that as far as face of the gentleman and his hands begin to decompose. possible, one must avoid exposing the prepared paper to any other light source than diat of the camera obscura. Bayard continued his pathetic efforts to establish a claim The description above and one or two proofs obtained

to being the inventor of one of the first photographic by this process were sent to the Academy, v\hich, in processes. He sent the following letter to the Academy of its session of 11 November 1S39, had kindly Science in France, on the subject of his direct positive on acknowledged their receipt. Kindly open this packet. paper method Monsieur, if ygu think it is relcvant.-

^4 February 1 840 The packet was opened and found to contain two photo-

Until today 1 have held back from giving to the public graphs on paper and the following note the photographic process ot which I am the inventor, 1 MitttoiTS On^iticiitx dei Cri-nlettrs de la Photographies R. Colson. cd., first wishing to make this process as perfect as possible Paris, 1898. but as I have not been able to prevent some information 2 Ibid. : ; : SUN PICTURES 57

Photographic process OHipaper The photographic picture enclosed was made on 24 October 1839 in 18 minutes- from 11 o'clock in the

morning to 11. 1 8, by the tollovving process: Dip the paper in a weak solution ot sodium chloride

when it is completely dry, brush this paper with silver nitrate dissolved in six times its weight of water. With the paper almost dry and protected from all

action of light, expose it to the fumes of iodine, then in the camera obscura, then to mercury, as in M. Daguerre's process, and finish by washing it in a solution ofhyposulphite ofsoda.

At the time the paper is taken out ot the camera

obscura, you can hardly see traces of the drawing ; but

as soon as the mercury vapour condenses on the paper, vou can sec pictures forming as happens with the metal plates, but with this difference, that the pictures are produced in reverse as in M. Talbot's process. Paris, 8 November 1839'

The race was on with a vengeance. Talbot received a

letter from his mother m Paris, dated 1 1 February 1843

It seems this M. Bayard has nol taken his invention from yours and he takes extreme pains to bring it to perfection

... I really wish you would bring this business to bear,

and strike while the iron is hot, for if once M. Bayard

succeeds, yours will diminish, and there is at this M. Bayard's process is quite different from yours. moment an enthusiasm for Talhotype which may vanish He blackens the paper in the light before putting it in particularly in such a volatile country as this ... I have the camera previously to which he dips it in a certain never seen before so good a chance tor your fame, liquid, which renders it sensitive to light which then

don't let It slip thro' your fmgers.- produces a positive picture ; although therefore you arc obliged to have a separate process for each picture

Bayard's process is described later, in a letter to Talbot (though I should conceive they might be rcpicted [sic] from the Rev. C. R.Jones, 2 March 1843. With critical by your sensitive paper) the effect produced is delicacy, Jones intimates a preference for Bay.ird's, over wonderfully sharp and pow erful. Talbot's, images With respect to the time required it is much interior

to the Calotype as it requires 10 minutes even in sunlight

March 2nd 1843 to make a good picture and is therefore inapplicable to

... 1 am afraid that you imagine I either underrate or portraits.

have not fairly tried your beautiful discovery, neither M. Bayard succeeded while I was in Paris last May

of which, I assure you is the case; I admire it beyond in making the pictures, after setting, perfectly impervious

anything and tried it at Paris with M. Regnault & M. to light ; and some days after I saw him receive trom the Bayard. (The latter succeeded in making an excellent Societc d'Encouragenicnt 4000 trs. portrait of myself) the only thing which delayed me [Jones goes on to describe that in the case ot Bayard's from doing much more was the apparent want of a death his secret process had been deposited \\ ith Baron more perfect and sure medium of transmission in the Scguier who told Jones that it was wonderfully simple.]

way of paper. As we found it continually playing tricks . . . Have you never tried any positive paper? Or has in ti.xing his? in the form of blotches & spots. If you could refer me Sir J. Herschel succeeded

to any means of avoiding these I slid, be very much I tried to apply your method to the French Isinglass obliged. paper, but found it shrunk and spoilt by the immersion.'

1 Ibid. 2 Lacock Papers (LA 43-24)- PIONEERS Of PHOTOGRAPHY

The following is an extract from an extremely compre- pleasing portrait. In the Daguerreotype the landscapes hensive analysis of photography purporting to be a are all reverted, whereas in the Calotype the drawing is review ot four books on the subject published between exactly conformable to nature. This objection can ot

1839 and 1842. It appeared in The Edinburgh Review, course be removed, cither by admitting the rays into

January 1843. The writer. Sir David Brewster, is an the camera after reflection from a mirror, or by total important figure in the early history of photography. A reflection from a prism; but in both these cases, the Scottish physicist, he was particularly concerned with additional reflections and refractions are accompanied optics and light, and had long been involved in the gesta- w'ith a loss of light, and also with a dimunition, to a tion period preceding the birth of photography. He was, certain extent, of distinctness of the image. The m a way, the man behind both Talbot and David Octavius Daguerrcot)'pe may be considered as having nearly

Hill (1802-70) and Robert Adamson (1821-48). It was he attained perfection, both in the quickness ot its operations who encouraged Talbot in his first photographic experi- and in-die minute perfection of its pictures; whereas ments, and who brought Hill, the artist, and Adamson, the Calotype is yet in its infancy - ready to make a new the photographer, together in 1843 : advance when a proper paper, or other ground, has been discovered, and when such a change has been

In thus stating the peculiar advantages of Photography, made in its chemical processes as shall yield a better we have supposed the Daguerreotype and Calotype to colour, and a softer distribution of the colouring be the same art. Our readers have already seen in what material. the difference really consists ; but it is still necessary that we should attempt to draw a comparison between them, Brewster's somewhat circumspect message is clear. How- as sister arts, with advantages peculiar to each. ever much the daguerreotype had reached perfection in

In doing this, our friends in Paris must not suppose its delineation of detail, the many advantages of the that we have any intention of making the least deduction calotype would ultimately give it a greater ascendancy. trom the merits of M. Daguerre, or the beauty of his At that date the daguerreotype still reigned supreme, with invention; wluch cannot be affected by the subsequent the calotype generally relegated to an inferior position. discovery of the Calotype by Mr Talbot. While a To put things in their proper perspective, Brewster may

Daguerreotype picture is much more sharp and accurate have felt obliged to state the case for his friend Talbot. in its details than a Calotype, the latter possesses the History has proven him right. advantage of giving a greater breadth and massiveness to The article appearedjust before the auspicious meeting its landscapes and portraits. In the one, we can detect of Hill and Adamson took place m Edinburgh. Brewster liidden details by the application of the microscope; was Principal ot United College, University of St in the other, every attempt to magnify its details is Andrew's, and had been in close touch with Adamson and injurious to the general effect. In point of expense, a his brother John, a doctor in the town. Brewster en- Daguerreotype picture vastly exceeds a Calotype one couraged Robert Adamson to take up photography as of the same size. With its silver plate and glass covering, a profession. Indeed, in the same article he announced a quarto plate must cost five or six shillings, while a that Mr Robert Adamson, 'whose skill and experience

Calotype one will not cost as many pence. In point ot in photography is very great, is about to practise the art portability, permanence, and facility of examination, professionally in our northern metropolis'. No doubt the Calotype picture possesses a peculiar advantage. It that article, with its sensitive analyses of the two types of has been stated, but we know not the authority, that photography, hastened, or even generated, the fruitful Daguerreotype pictures have been effaced before they partnership of Hill and Adamson later that year and con- reached the East Indies; but if this be true, we have no firmed them in their choice of the calotype medium. doubt that a remedy will soon be found for the defect. Because Hill was a distinguished painter, his photo- The great and unquestionable superiority of the graphs were inevitably to be compared with the works

Calotype pictures, however, is their power of of earlier masters of portraiture: Rembrandt, Reynolds, multiplication. One Daguerreotype cannot be copied Raeburn. No doubt Adamson's role in producing these from another ; and the person whose portrait is desired, portrait photographs was more than merely technical,

must sit for every copy that he wishes. When a pleasing yet the compositions, and particularly the positive use of picture is obtained, another of the same character cannot the many elegant random effects intrinsic in the medium, be produced. In the Calotype, on the contrary, we can point to the sensitivities of a liighly trained artist. Hill's take any number of pictures, w ithin reasonable limits, preference for the calotype rather than the daguerreotype from a negative ; and a whole circle ot friends can medium was most likely determined by his predilection

procure, for a mere trifle, a copy of a successful and for a broader kind of handling and for soft, evanescent '

SUN PICTURES 59

D. O H il: Pobe't Ac3-r,sor. aid Drjohn Adamson (right) outside the porch of Pock House. Calton Hill. Edinburgh, Robert Acarrso'^ was onl/ 22 when he went into partnership with D. O. Hill. Rock House was their studio: the porch faced south and photographs were made in the open air. various props being added to simulate indoor locations. Calotype.

effects - an early indication of the expressive range of Oddly enough. Hill would certainly have been offended a as photography. J. Craig Annan, Glasgow photographer had he been remembered only a photographer. This is largely responsible for reviving Hill's reputation at the confirmed by the fact that his obituary makes no refer- beginning of this century, quotes perceptively from one ence to his photographic activities. Ironically, though. of Hill and Adanison's sitters, comparing their photo- Hill has emerged from an undoubted obscuritj' as a graphs with paintings by R^eburn: painter to become a brilliant figure in the histor)- of photography. He seems to have treated photography as

There is the same broad freedom of touch ; no nice a secondary artistic activity, according to it the same miniature stripplings, as if laid in by the point ofa status painters of the time gave to print-making, and

needle - no sharp edged strokes; all is solid, massy taking advantage of the extra income it could provide.

broad : more distinct at a distance than when viewed This is suggested in Hill's letter of 25 October 1848 to near at hand. The arrangements of the lights and John Scon of Colnaghi's, London, that highly reputable shadows seem rather the result of a happy haste, in which firm of print publishers:' half the effect was produced by design, half by accident,

than of great labour and care ; and yet how exquisitely My dear Mr Scott,

true the general aspect ! Every stroke tells, and serves, I have been very long in fulfilling the promise I as in the portraits of Raebum, to do more than relieve volunteered when in London - ofsending you some

the features : it serves also to indicate the prevailing specimens of the Calotypes I made in conjunction with

mood and predominant power of the mind. my lamented friend Mr Robert Adamson.' I have now

1 Camera Work, No. 11, July isws. quoting Hugh Miller, 'Leading Articles on Various Subjects', ed. Davidson, 1870. ] died in January 1848. 60 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

V--

flw .'«

D. O. Hill: Eyewitness Ma^' sketch made 1843 at the first General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland at Cannonn ills. Edinburgh Hill and Adamson's first Caiotypes were made to help Hill with his painting of the scene (see 3.8).

the pleasure of sending you a hundred specimens (pray they appear in their better attire in taking up their gratify nie by accepting them) and have selected them residence with you.

with some care m the hope that you may be induced An artist tonight tells nie he finds mounting the to mount and bind them m a way similar to that in Caiotypes on faintly tinted Crayon papers gives a value which Eastlakes and Stanfields volumes are got up. Let to the lights which they do not possess on white paper. me shortly describe these. The Caiotypes are mounted But follow your own taste in this matter. The white on half colombier stone plate paper. This is done by a spots must be carefully stippled out - with water colours copper plate printer in the same way that indice proots of the same tint. are prmted - and perhaps using a weak solution of If you should come across any lover of the Calotype gum - to ensure adhesion - but the thm paste is not who shall express a desire to possess any of our \\ ork - or - used & don't keep them long in a damp state. In a similar volume - of course I shall be happy to supply binding them up I have adopted a somewhat extravagant them or it direct - or through you as a matter of - style of binding morocco gilt - each leaf mounted business. I regret seeing so little of Mr Mackay - 1 have on a guard of satin ribbon for strength as well as been since he came to Scotland continually in & out of appearance - between the leaves a leaf of thin glazed town -& am not yet living in my own house. I trust paper - as tissue paper - the binding of each of our his Whiskey escaped the fangs of the guager. volumes cost about 5 guineas - on the title page - one I beg to be kindly & gratefully remembered to Miss of the Caiotypes should be used as a vignette - this may Scott, & that Mrs Morton &; Mr Colnaghi will accept be the Greyfriars Tomb - with the artist sitting of my kind regards I amjust starting again for Ayrshire sketching & the girls looking on - & the lettering turns where I have yet some field work to do. etc. done in faint sepia or gold liquid with a hair pencil. Believe me My dear Sir Yours entirely The portrait of my amiable friend Adamson - who did D. O. Hill' much for the art - cut to a smallish oval - might be on a preliminary title - 1 forget what binders call it. Thus This letter, tor all its imperfections, is worth careful and my own large portrait might be opposite to his - on scrutiny, for it tells us of Hill's attitude to the new art, of the larger title page - 1 have written the names in pencil his position vis-a-vis Adamson, and ofthe tender care and on all the subjects they might be if you cared for it respect given to the presentation and conservation of printed in faint sepia letters on the mounting paper, objects which we, in our profligate world, habitually under each picture. Please excuse all this minuteness on a dismiss as ephemera. subject you may consider very unworthy of it - although

'tis one on which I feel somewhat warmly. I would like 1 Letter in collection of tlie National Library of Scotland.

3,2 HIPPOlYTE BA 3,3 HIPPOLYTE BAYARD: 3.4 D O HILL AND ROBERT ADAMSON: PIPER AND DRUMMER C- FISHERGIRLS. NEWHAVEN D. O. HILL AND ROBERT ADAMSON: 3 7 D- O HILL AND ROBERT ADAMSON: DURHAM CATHEDRAL

39 D. O. HILL AND ROBERT ADAMSOIJ THE BIRDCAGE

FAMOUS MEN AND FAIR WOMEN

"I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied. ()874)

The studio, I remember, was very untidy end very uncomfortable. Mrs Cameron put a crow/n on my head and posed me as the heroic queen. This was somewhat tedious, but not half so bod as the exposure. A Lady Amateur who sat for Mrs Cameron (1886) JULIA MARGARET CAMERON. PRAY GOD BRING FATHER SAFELY HOME A MARGARET CAMERON: A STUDY

It is not merely fortuitous that the earhest criticisms of the photographs of that Victorian lady, Juha Margaret Cameron (1815-79), coincide almost exactly with those meted out in France against those 'abominable' canvasses produced by the young Impressionists:

Mrs Cameron's photographs arc only inferior because her artistic knowledge is

.^ inferior. . .

The Ph,iu\^r,iphi( Jonnial, 15 August 1864. :

74 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Mrs Cameron exhibits her series of out of tociis portraits of celebrities. We must give this lady credit tor daring originality but at the expense of all other photographic qualities.'

At the German Galler)- in Bond Street, Mrs Cameron exhibits a very extensive collection ofher studies and portraits. Our own opinion of this style of work has

already been recorded. There is, in many cases, much evidence of art feeling, especially in the light and shade,

the composition, so far as form is concerned, often being awkward. The subjects ot many ot the portraits - such as Sir John Herschel, Henry Taylor, Holman Hunt, Alfred Tennyson, and others - are full of interest in themselves, and are often noble in form and appearance, a circumstance which alone gives value to the exhibition. Not even the distinguished character ofsome of the heads serve, however, to redeem the result of wilfully imperfect photography trom being altogether repulsive one portrait ot the Poet Laureate presents him in a guise which would be sufficient to convict him, if he were charged as a rogue and vagabond, before any bench ot magistrates in the kingdom.^

Julia Margaret Cameron by her son. Henry Herschel Hay Cameron in 1870. Wet collodion. The following extract is from Benjamin Wyles, Impres- sions of the Photographic Exhibition', printed in The British Journal oj Photography, 9 December 1870: misty 'glamour' about Mrs Cameron's productions

that is decidedly pleasing, but a closer examination is

All photographers are enthusiasts, of course ; they not nearly so satisfactory. There is a sort of feeling after

it cannot help it if they would, and, being enthusiasts, art - a suggestiveness ; but that is all. The beholder is

as naturally follows that they must see the concourse left to work out the idea in his own imagination, if he

of pictures got together in Conduit-street, to mark off can ; but as nine out often cannot - not being blessed

another year's progress . . . Once in the exliibition, with the artistic faculty - it follows that the peculiar line

and ones name entered in the porter's book, what a this lady has chosen will never allow ot her works being crowd of good things seem to claim one's attention very popular.

from all quarters at once ! - big pictures and little, Moreover, in working for the tew it might be well

portraits and views, reproductions and transparencies, to have some little respect for the proprieties. Art is not

carbon and silver, and nearly all above the average ot art because it is slovenly, and a good picture is not excellence. Any one lot at home and by itself would improved by having the film torn, or being in some

be a source of enjoyment. A hasty run round by way of parts a mere indistinguishable smudge. Ot all departments exploring soon shows that some exhibitors have in photographic art perhaps the style of Mrs

quantity, some quality, and some have been happy Cameron's works is the easiest. A lens turned right out enough to combine both. Mrs Cameron, Woodbury, of focus, negatives not intensified, the upper part of Robinson, Col. Stuart Wortley, Blanchard, and the figure only taken usually, and when taken "giving it

Heliotype are all very much 'to the fore'. Many others a name' - this seems to be about the extent of the special are not less deserving if less conspicuous. means employed.

Taking the lady first, as in honour bound - and \\ hich good rule the hanging committee seems to have gone The hotly contested discussion between hard and soft upon - one finds a large screen nearly filled with her focus, between scrupulous tccimique and the priority of works, and duplicates of the same are hung at intervals expression, or sensation, certainly transcended photo-

on the walls. Looked at eii masse there is a sort of graphy at the time, and applied as well to painting. These comments, in the context ot Impressionist painting, are 1 The PltotonTctpUicjoitmat , 15 February 1865. surprising, and though the first group exliibition of 2 Ptwlogrnphic News, 20 March 1 868. not FAMOUS MEN AND FAIR WOMEN 75

those 'depraved' Frenchmen (which, not altogether by would suggest, and noble are the teachings of one whose chance, took place in Nadar's recently vacated photo- word has become a text to the nations -

graphic studios, see chapter 6) was not held till 1 874, suffi- 'Be wise: not easily forgiven cient criticism of their paintings had made it across die Are those, who setting wide the doors that bar Channel from 1863 (and the infamous Salon des refuses) The secret bridal chambers of the heart to alert the Ruskin-dominatcd critics to the idea that Let in the day.' soft focus, whether in painting or photography, was too

crude botii for the refined and for the hoi polloi. Under- Therefore it is with effort that I restrain the overflow standably, then, Mrs Cameron's reputation was bound to of my heart and simply state that my first lens was given improve towards the end of that century and certainly in to me by my cherished departed daughter and her

the first quarter of this, after Impressionism had become husband with the words, 'It may amuse you. Mother, respectable and accepted as a modern art form. to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.'

Mrs Cameron had a reputation for being sloppy with The gift from those I loved so tenderly added more her technique, though there were some sensitive enough and more impulse to my deeply seated love of the

to understand that this was the inevitable result of an beautiful, and from the first moment I handled my lens

irrepressible enthusiasm mixed with a fervent desire to with a tender ardour, and it has now become to me as a

capture some deeper layer in the personality ofher sitters, living thing, with voice and memory and creative

or to project her own personality on them. vigour. Many and many a week in the year '64 1 worked

This IS made clear in her brief, unfinished, autobio- fruitlessly, but not hopelessly - graphical manuscript, 'Annals of My Glass House', writ- 'A crowd ofhopes ten in 1 874 and intended, it seems, to serve as a corrective That sought to sow themselves like winged lies for the obtuseness ofcritics who teased and ridiculed Julia Bom out of everything I heard and saw Cameron's photographs in their relentless advocacy of a Fluttered about my senses and my soul.' hard-focus style. We reproduce the 'Amials' here in its entirety, just as it appeared in the Photofiraphic Journal, I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and July 1927, on the occasion of an exhibition of Mrs at length the longing has been satisfied. Its difficulty

Cameron's work. The Photographic Journal is now con- enhanced the value of the pursuit. I began with no

trite and apologetic about the indiscretions of its pre- knowledge of the art. I did not know where to place decessors. The appearance of the 'Annals' in 1927 my dark box, how to focus my sitter, and my first coincided with a publication by Virginia Woolf and the picture I effaced to my consternation by rubbing my art critic, Roger Fry, in which Julia Margaret Cameron's hand over the filmy side of the glass. It was a portrait portrait photographs were raised to the highest spheres of a farmer of Freshwater, who, to my fancy, resembled of art. The 'Annals' were made available to The Phoio- Bollingbroke. The peasantry ofour island is very j^raphic Journal by Mrs Cameron's grand-daughter, Mrs handsome. From the men, the women, the maidens Trench. Mrs Cameron's excitement for her chosen means and the children I have had lovely subjects, as all the of expression, wrapped up in an impetuous nature, shine patrons of my photography know. tlirough in this poeticising estimation of her own worth: This farmer I paid half-a-crown an hour, and, after many halt-crowns and many hours spent in experiments,

I got my first picture, and [this was the one I] effaced it ANNALS OF MY GLASS HOUSE when holding it triumphantly to dry.

'Mrs Cameron's Photography', now ten years old, has I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a

passed the age of lisping and stammering and may glazed fowl-house I had given to my children became

speak for itself, having travelled over Europe, America my glass house ! The hens were liberated, 1 hope and and Australia, and met with a welcome which has given believe not eaten. The profit of my boys upon new laid

it confidence and power. Therefore, I think that the eggs was stopped, and all hands and hearts sympathised 'Annals of My Glass House' will be welcome to the in my new labour, since the society of hens and chickens public, and, endeavouring to clothe my little history was soon changed for that of poets, prophets, painters

with light, as with a garment, I feel confident that the and lovely maidens, who all in turn have immortalized truthful account of indefatigable work, with the the humble little farm erection.

anecdote of human interest attached to that work, will Having succeeded with one farmer, I next tried two

add in some measure to its value. children ; my son, Hardinge, being on his Oxford That details strictly personal and touching the vacation, helped ine in tlie difficulty of focusing. I

affections should be avoided, is a truth one's own instinct was half-way through a beautiful picture when a 76 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

splutter oflaughter from one of the children lost me

that picture, and less ambitious now, I took one child alone, appealing to her feelings and telling her of the waste of poor Mrs Cameron's chemicals and strength

if she moved. The appeal had its effect, and I now

produced a picture which I called

'My First Success'

I was in a transport of delight. I ran all over the house to search for gifts for the child. I felt as if she entirely had made the picture. I printed, toned, fixed and framed

It, and presented it to her father that same day : size

I I by 9 inches.

Sweet, sunny haired little Annie ! No later prize has effaced the memory of this joy, and now that this same

Annie is 1 8, how much I long to meet her and try my master hand upon her.

Having thus made my start, I will not detain my

readers with other details ot small interest ; I only had to work on and to reap rich reward.

I believe that what my youngest boy, Henry Herschcl.

who is now himself a very remarkable photographer,

told me is quite true - that my first successes in my out-of-focus pictures were 'a fluke'. That is to say, that when focusing and coming to something which, to

my eye, W'as very beautiful, I stopped there instead of Julia Margaret Cameron e. My First Success' {January 186S). Wet collodirn. screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which

all other photographers insist upon.

I exhibited as early as May '65. 1 sent some their walls which seemed to invite the irony and spleen photographs to Scotland - a head of Henry Taylor, with of the printed notice.

the light illuminating the countenance in a way that To I next sent my photographs. Berlin, carmot be described; a Raphaelesque Madonna, called the very home of photographic art, gave me the first

'La Madonna Aspettante'. These photographs still exist, year a bronze medal, the succeeding year a gold medal,

and I think they cannot be surpassed. They did not and one English institution - the Hartly Institution -

receive the prize. The picture that did receive the prize, awarded me a silver medal, taking, I hope, a home called 'Brenda', clearly proved to me that detail of interest in the success of one whose home was so near table-cover, chair and crinoline skirt were essentials to to Southampton.

the judges of the art, which was then in its infancy. Personal sympathy has helped me on very much. My Since that miserable specimen, the author of "Brenda' husband from first to last has watched every picture

has so greatly improved that I am content to compete with delight, and it is my daily habit to run to him

with him and content that those who value fidelity and with every glass upon which a fresh glory is newly

manipulation should fmd me still behind him. Artists, stamped, and to listen to his enthusiastic applause. Tliis however, immediately crowned me with laurels, and habit ofrunning into the dining-room with my wet

though 'Fame' is pronounced 'The last infirmity of pictures has stained such an immense quantity of table

noble minds', I must confess that when those whose linen with mtrate ofsilver, indelible stains, that 1 should judgment I revered have valued and praised my works, have been banished from any less indulgent

"my heart has leapt up like a rainbow in the sky' and I household.

have renewed all my zeal. Our chieffriend [Sir Henry Taylor] lent himself

The Photographic Society of London in theiryoiiriia/ greatly to my early efforts. Regardless of the possible

would have dispirited me very much had I not valued dread that sitting to my fancy might be making a fool of

that criticism at its worth. It was unsparing and too himself, he, with greatness which belongs to unselfish

manifestly unjust for me to attend to it. The more affection, consented to be in turn Friar Laurence with lenient and discerning judges gave me large space upon Juliet, Prospero with Miranda, Ahasuerus with Queen FAMOUS MEN AND FAIR WOMEN 77

of the fashion ofit has perished. This last autumn her head illustrating the exquisite Maud -

'There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion flower at the gate'

is as pure and perfect in outline as were my Madonna Studies ten years ago, with ten times added pathos in the expression. The very unusual attributes ofher character

and complexion of her mind, if I may so call it, deserve mention in due time, and are the wonder of those whose

lite is blended with ours as intimate friends of the house.

I have been cheered by some very precious letters on my photography, and having the permission of the

writers, I will reproduce some of those which will have

an interest for all. An exceedingly kind man from Berlin displayed

great zeal, for which I have ever felt grateful to him. Writing in a foreign language, he evidently consulted the dictionary which gives two or three meanings for each word, and in the choice between these two or three

the result is very comical. I only wish that I was able

to deal with all foreign tongues as felicitously:

'Mr announces to Mrs Cameron that he

received the first half, a Pound Note, and took the Photographies as Mrs Cameron wishes. He will take Julia Margaret Cameron: Thomas Carlyle, c. 1867. Taken al her sister's home. Little Holland House. Kensington. Wet collodion. the utmost sorrow* to place the pictures were good. 'Mr and the Comitie regret heavilyt that

it is now impossible to take the Portfolio the rooms Esther, to hold my poker as his sceptre, and do whatever are filled till the least winkle.J I desired of him. With this great good fjriend was it true 'The English Ambassadc takes the greatest interest that so utterly of the placement the Photographies of Mrs Cameron 'The chord ofself with trembling and M sent his extra ordinarest respects to the Passed like Music out of sight,' celebrated and famous female photographs. - Your most obedient, etc' and not only were my pictures secured for me, but entirely out of the Prospero and Miranda picture sprung The kindness and delicacy of this letter is sclf-<:vidcnt a marriage which has, I hope, cemented the welfare and the mistakes are easily explained: and well-being of a real King Cophetua who, in the * Care - which was the word needed - is expressed by

Miranda, saw the prize wliich has proved a jewel in 'Sorgen' as well as 'Sorrow '. We invert the sentence that monarch's crown. The sight of the picture caused and we read - To have the pictures well placed where the resolve to be uttered which, after i8 months of the light is good. constancy, was matured by personal knowledge, then t Regret - Heavily, severely, seriously. - fulfilled, producing one of the prettiest idylls of real life J Winkel is comer in German.

that can be conceived, and, what is of tar more The exceeding civility with which the letter closes

importance, a marriage of bliss with cliildrcn worthy is the courtesy of a German to a lady artist, and from of being photographed, as their mother had been, for first to last, Germany has done me the honour and

their beauty; but it must also be observed that the father kindness until, to crown all my happy associations with was eminently handsome, with a head ot the Greek that country, it hasjust fallen to my lot to have the

type and fair ruddy Saxon complexion. privilege of photographing the Crown (Prince] and

Another little maid of my own from early girlhood Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia. has been one of the most beautiful and constant of my This German letter had a retinement which permits models, and m every manner ot torm has her face been one to smile iri(/i the writer, not m the writer. Less

reproduced, yet never has it been felt that the grace sympathetic, however, is the laughter which some : -

78 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

English letters elicit, ot which I give one example When I began to photograph 1 sent my turst triumphs to this revered friend, and his hurrahs for my success 'Miss Lydia Louisa Summerhouse Donkins informs I here give. The date is September 25th, 1866: Mrs Cameron that she wishes to sit to her for her photograph. Miss Lydia Louisa Summerhouse 'My Dear Mrs Cameron -

Donkins is a carriage person, and, therefore, could 'This last batch of your photographs is indeed assure Mrs Cameron that she would arrive with her wonderful, and wonderful m two distinct lines of dress uncrumplcd. perfection. That head of the "Mountain Nymph, 'Should Miss Lydia Lousia Summerhouse Donkins Sweet Liberty" (a little farouche and egaree, by the

be satisfied with her picture, Miss Lydia Lousia way, as if first let loose and half afraid that it was too

Summerhouse Donkins has a friend who is also a good), IS really a most astonishing piece of high relief

Carriage person who would also wish to have her She is absolutely alive and thrusting out her head from

likeness taken.' the paper into the air. This is your own special style.

Theother of "Summer Days" is in the other manner I answered Miss Lydia Louisa Summerhouse Donkins quite different, but very beautiful, and the grouping that Mrs Cameron, not beinga professional photographer, perfect. Proserpine is awful. If ever she was "herself regretted she was not able to 'take her likeness' but that the fairest flower" her "cropping" by "Gloomy had Mrs Cameron been able to do so she would h.ivc Dis" has thrown the deep shadows of Hades into not very much preferred having her dress crumpled. only the colour, but the whole cast and expression A little art teaching seemed a kindness, but I have ofher features. Christabel is a little too indistinct more than once regretted that I could not produce the to my mind, but a fine head. The large profile is likeness of this individual with her letter affixed thereto. admirable, and altogether you seem resolved to This was when I was at L.H.H., to which place I had out-do yourself on every fresh effort. moved my camera for the sake of taking the great Carlyle. This was encouragement eno' for me to feel m\selt

When I have had these men before my camera m)- held worthy to take this noble head of my great Master whole soul has endeavoured to do its duty towards himself, but three years I had to wait patiently and them in recording faithfully the greatness oi the inner longingly before the opportunity could offer.

as well as the features of the outer man. Meanwhile I took another immortal head, that ot The photograph thus taken has been almost the Alfred Tennyson, and the result was that profile embodiment of a prayer. Most devoutly was this feeling portrait which he himself designates as the 'Dirty

present to me when I photographed my illustrious and Monk'. It IS a fit representation of Isaiah or of Jeremiah, revered as well as beloved friend, Sir John Herschel. and Henry Taylor said the picture was as fine as Alfred He was to me as a Teacher and I-figh Priest. From my Tennyson's finest poem. The Laureate has since said of

earliest girlhood I had loved and honoured him, and It that he likes it better than any photograph that has

; that 'except' it was after a friendship of 3 1 years' duration that the been taken of him except one by Mayall high task of giving his portrait to the nation was allotted speaks for itself. The comparison seems too comical. to me. He had corresponded with me when the art was It IS rather like comparing one of Madame Tussaud's

in its first infancy in the days ofTalbot-type and autotype, waxwork heads to one of Woolner's ideal heroic busts.

I was then residing in Calcutta, and scientific discoveries At this time Mr Watts gave me such encouragement

sent to that then benighted land were water to the that I felt as if I had wings to fly with.

parched lips of the starved, to say nothing of the blessing of friendship so faithfully evinced. Certain aspects of the preservation of photographs were But one suspects When I returned to England the friendship was obviously of concern to Julia Cameron. coatings naturally renewed. I had already been made godmother that the problems she encountered with the on to one of his daughters, and he consented to become her glass negatives were to some extent due to a sub- godfather to my youngest son. A memorable day it was conscious unwillingness to submit to any technical disci- when my infant's three sponsors stood before the font, pline, and even to an obscure desire to subvert teclinique. in not acting by proxy, but all moved by real affection to One wonders what her real feelings were when, the me and to my husband to come in person, and surely early summer of 1869, she attended a meeting of the Poetry, Philosophy and Beauty were never more fitly Photographic Society at which her problem with col- represented than when Sir John Herschel, Henry Taylor lodion-coating was discussed? and my own sister, Virginia Somers, were encircled

round the little font of the Mortlake Church. ; FAMOUS MEN AND FAIR WOMEN 79

appreciable sometimes held in suspension likewise

quantities of common salt . . . expressed Mr Hooper, and after him Mr F. Eliot, the opinioas favourable to the practice of wrapping negatives in paper ... Mr Dallmeyer thought that the use of certain kinds technically known of glass which were liable to wliat is induce a want ot as 'sweating', might sometimes vitreous nermancnc'e m the finished negative. The escape of alkali, the best surface was then affected by the of the remedy against w hich was the immersion glasses in diluted sulphuric acid.'

must have Such ponderous ruminations on tccliniquc there is no indi- been excruciating to Julia Cameron, and subsequently fol- cation that any of the suggestions were her photographic lowed up. The spontaneous manner of deep-seated abhor- procedures would seem to guarantee a fiddle-faddle winch to some rence for all the chemical even ot an photographers assumed the proportions overriding concern aesthetic experience. Julia Cameron's exigencies ot technique. for her subjects superseded all the episode at the may therefore conclude that tins little |ohn Frederick WMIiam Herschel. We Julia Margaret Cameron: Sir imtiatcd by Mrs Collmgwood .A family Photographic Society was in large part April 1869. 'Taken at his own residence. himself one of the most she was not quite so friend of the Camerons. Herschel was Cameron to demonstrate that of photography, inventing the terms her critics distinguished early pioneers or so brutal about technique as collodion. thoughtless negative' and 'positive' for Fox Talbot. Wet supposed. , which throws further light Here is a useful document The Chairman remarked that he liad often regretted Cameron's work:- meetings ot the on Julia that ladies so seldom attended the two ladies were present; Society. He was glad to see that aUdyAmMiir A Rcminiscciue ofMrs Canwroii by Mrs Cameron, wished to sa\' a tew - and one of them, of modem photographers I suppose the great majority the Members. words to - remember very little ot the the at least the younger ones Mrs Cameron said she was desirous of ascertaining of the late Mrs Julia Margaret Cameron. some of her pictiires cause of the appearance ofcracks in occupied a Twenty years ago Mrs Cameron's pictures large-sized portrait of Sir John Herschel, negatives. In a the Photographic place of honour at the Exhibitions of (exhibited), the whole face ot the taken two years ago the dear old lady Society, and a very large place, for with fine cracks, which, although negative was covered the very largest believed in nothing less than plates of continuity of the collodion tilm, they destroyed the when 1 able to manipulate. In those days, coating of the size she was did not seem to extend outwards to the could never knew absolutely nothing of photography, I Another, a large portrait of Tennyson, was varnish. _ Mrs Cameron affected such enormous forty-five of understand why affected, and, altogether, about similarly that with a large plate one can pictures ; I now'know given way ... her negatives had other annoyances, give a good margin for stains and were passed round for examination. The negatives 1 plate asteful to use a 1 5 by 2 tiiough It seems rather w B. Rjjade suggesting that the binocular The Rev. J. Still, all Mrs Cameron s in order to get a picture 9 by 6. question as to whether microscope would decide the and a photographs were not failures, whole or partial, or the superposed the fault lay with the collodion film because good many did not need to be cut down at all, varnish ... edges, did an imperfection at the corners, or near the called upon to make a few remarks Mr Thomas felt in which Mrs not, according to the Rejlander school, films ... on the subject of cracked now at Cameron studied, matter very much. Looking conceived that the marine residence Mr Blanchard of modem photographers, might the finished productions of Mrs Cameron (Freshwater, Isle ofWight) May i86y. kind of injury 1 Pluhii Journal. 15 have to answer for the prevalence of this The Seirs. I January 1886. with moisture, and 2 Thr PlwlOfir.ipliic for the sea-air was often loaded 80 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

]ulia Margaret Cameron: Too late, too late' (above left). 'King Lear and his daughters' (above right with Mr Came Zenobiafbelowl.c. 1870.

.ibsolutely without the shghtcst blemish, the pictures ot

Mrs Cameron, with tlieir numerous imperfections, and framed in a slap-dash, rough style, at which the hanging committee must have shuddered, come back to me

with a naivete which is quite refreshing.

It was after Mrs Cameron had become celebrated

that I made her acquaintance. Her contributions to the

Photographic Society's Exhibitions began in 1 864, and

the Photographic News spoke as follows : 'As one ot the

especial charms of photography consists in its completeness, detail, and finish, we can scarcely commend works in which the aim appears to have been to avoid these qualities. The portraits are chiefly those of men of mark, as artists or authors, and include Mr Holman Hunt, Mr Henry Taylor, Mr G. F. Watts, and some others, and, both from the subjects, and the mode of treatment, interest, while they fail to please us.' The non-photographic press, however, went into raptures over Mrs Cameron's pictures, the llhistrated Loudon News putting them forward as models for photographers to imitate, and speculating whether their peculiar softness, or what some irreverent critics of the time called 'fuzziness', was not produced by something applied to the photograph. This of course was nonsense, and so was a good deal of the extravagant

praise. Indeed, I think it did her more harm than good,

for it made her fancy photographers were hostile to her. 1

FAMOUS MEN AND FAIR WOMEN 8

and led her into the speculation of taking a gallery in was not nearly so important to keep dead still. But it the West End for the exhibition solely of her works. wasn't the tecliniquc that determined Julia Cameron's

This exhibition was a non-success, as it could scarcely style, necessity masquerading as a virtue. That peculiarity fail to be. of photographic form merely reinforced what she had already in mind.

The reference to the size ot Julia Cameron's plates is important. Despite her rather primitive instincts she no doubt was yielding to a conscious desire to create a work of art, and it is difficult to convince people that a diminu- tive photograph could be sufficiently artful to compensate for the lack of nobility in scale. That, most likely, is a much more important factor than the advantages in being able to crop out marginal imperfections. But the larger the plates, the longer the exposure, and the Lady Amateur also presents us with a very graphic description of her ordeal while sitting for one of Mrs Cameron's subject pictures in Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight:

The studio, I remember, was very untidy and very uncomfortable. Mrs Cameron put-a crown on my head and posed me as the heroic queen. This was somewhat tedious, but not half so bad as the exposure. Mrs

Cameron warned mc before it commenced that it \\ ould take a long time, adding, with a sort of half groan, that it w'as the sole difficulty she had to contend with in working with large plates. The difficulties of development she did not seem to trouble about. The exposure began. A minute went over and 1 felt as if I must scream ; another minute, and the sensation was as as if my eyes were coming out of my head ; a third, and the back of my neck appeared to be afflicted with palsy ; a fourth, and the crown, which was too large, began to slip down on my forehead ; a fifth - but here

I utterly broke down . . . The first picture was nothing but ascricsof 'wabblings', and so was the second ; the third was more successful, though the torture ofstanding for nearly ten minutes without a head-rest was something indescribable. I have a copy of that picture now. The face and crown have not more than six outlines, and if it was Mrs Cameron's intention to represent Zenobia m the last stage of misery and desperation, 1 think she succeeded.'

Thus the blurred character of Julia Cameron's photo- graphs, and the Lady Amateur goes on to describe the Merlin which had moved so much during the exposure that 'at least fifty' ot his images could be found in the print. Obviously, posing before Mrs Cameron's large camera, with its consequent prolongation of the exposure time, was a far more excruciating task than sitting for a portrait in oils where despite the much longer sessions it

Tht Phologr.rplik Xnfs. l J.ii JULIA MARGARET CAMEROtJ ALICE LIDDE 1.2 JULIA MARGARET CAMERON: ALFRED TENNYSON -THE DIRTY MONK 13 JULIA MARGARET CAMERON: 'THE WHISPER OF THE MUSE' A MARGARET CAMERON: A GRC

TRAVELLING MAN

I "For my own part, I moy say that before I commenced photography did not see half the beauties in nature that I do now, and the glory and power of a precious landscape has often passed before me and left but a feeble impres- sion on my untutored mind; but it will never be so again. Samuel Bourne f1864) I

III II I

TIMOTHY O-SULLIVAN: HIS PHOTOGRAPHIC VAN ON A WESTERN SURVEY TRIP

B1SSON FRERES: THE ASCENT OF MONT BLANC M

SAMUEL BOURIiE. PANORAM.C V'lVJ AT CHINI

TRAVELLING MAN

Hima- -Between 1863 and 1866 Samuel Bourne (1834-1912) made three trips to the travellers. layas, which were in the best tradition of eighteenth-century gentlemen Bourne, however, was encumbered with an unbelievable cargo of photographic appropriate equipment and plates, not to mention the other necessities of Hfe Hcnncssy's to the daily existence of an Englishman abroad: an ample supply of hoist that brandy, 'sporting requisites', books and odd pieces of furniture. To entourage great load over one of the most perilous terrains on earth required an :

90 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

of at least thirty, and sometimes as many as sixty 'coolies' With scenery like this it is very difficult to deal with the who, more often than not, were pressed - or, as Bourne camera : it is altogether too gigantic and stupendous writes, 'puckeroed' - into service. Additionally there was to be brought within the limits imposed on photography. a staff of servants. Even the much-vaunted "globe lens' would find itself The son of a Staffordshire farmer. Bourne was closely unequal to extend its great divergence over these mighty aware of the seasons and the moods of nature, observa- subjects, and compress their rays on the tew square tions which in his youth he struggled to express in a kind inches of a collodion plate . . . But my anxiety to get of Words worthian poetry. Later he indulged this passion views ofsome of these fine combinations of rocks and in his accounts of the Himalayan vistas. As an amateur water often induced me to leave the regular track, and enthusiast he was exhibiting photographs in Notting- put myself and instruments in the greatest danger by ham as early as 1859, and he soon abandoned his job as a attempting an abrupt descent to some spot below bank clerk for the more congenial open-air life of the indicated by the eye as likely to command a fine landscape photographer. Three years later his astonishing picture. Though this was only accomplished with activities in India were to begin. immense difficulty, sundry bruises, and great personal

Bourne was the first European traveller to photograph fatigue under a scorching sun, I was in every instance the wilder parts of the Himalayan foothills, though there rewarded, always returning with pictures which the was one other photographer in the region, the Rajah of more contented gazer from above would scarcely Chumba. Bourne was invited to visit him. His Highness believe obtainable. But this toiling is almost too much was the proud possessor of the most exquisitely made for me, and, I must confess, it at the time greatly .' photographic equipment. And much to the disgust of outweighed the pleasure . . the utilitarian-minded traveller, these superb and lenses were not kept primarily for taking photographs; Bourne returned to Chim and then struck off to the they were valued for the sheer beauty of their design. west in the direction of Spiti. Again, he is overwhelmed Bourne published three series of elegantly written by the magnificence of the view, describing it with the accounts of his incrediblejoumeys. Strange ordeals they adulation of the most confirmed romantic:

were, undertaken more, it seems, in pursuit of that per- verse pleasure in adversity, in solitude and in pain, than What a mighty upbearing of mountains ! What an for the purported recording of the lofty grandeur of the endless vista of gigantic ranges and valleys, untold and magnificent Himalayan mountain ranges. These diaries unknown ! Peak rose above peak, summit above summit, appeared as instalments The British Journal of Photo- m range above and beyond range, innumerable and graphy, reconstructed from notes soon after the comple- boundless, until the mind refused to follow the eye in tion of the expedition, and in one case over two years its attempt to comprehend the whole in one grand later. can estimate, partly on Bourne's figures, that We conception.^ the total number of photographs taken on his three journeys must have been around 800 or 900. This out of Bourne then pays great tribute to the power of photo- more than 1,500 made in the three years or so he spent graphy to prepare the mind for what the eye may better at that time in India, as his negative numbers indicate. behold His second journey, to Kashrmr in 1864, lasted a full ten months during which time he made 546 negatives.

Bourne was, in fact, very sparing with his camera, not ... it must be set down to the credit of photography

only scrupulously selective, but conscious also of the that it teaches the mind to see the beauty and power of great difficulties entailed in preparing the plates. Some- such scenes as these, and renders it more susceptible of times, after a ten- or fourteen-mile diversion, the photo- their sweet and elevating impressions. For my own part,

I did grapher returned with only one or two negatives; some- I may say that before I commenced photography times with none. not see half the beauties m nature that I do now, and landscape has often Following his first journey, which took ten weeks. the glory and power of a precious left a feeble impression on my Bourne writes from Simla on 7 November 1 863. describ- passed before me and but so again.' ing the fantastic scenery he had seen 160 miles away on untutored nund ; but it will never be the road to Chim, near the Tibetan border. There, at an altitude of9000 feet, he had in full vie w great mountain 1 Boumc. 'Ten Weeks wilh the Camera in chc Himalayas'. Vie Brilisli ranges reaching above him to heights of 22,000 feet. So Journal of PhotofiTctpUy, I February 1864. it overwhelming was the landscapf that often seemed 2 Op. cit. 15 February 1864. beyond the capabilities of photography to convey: 3 Ib.d. 1

TRAVELLING MAN 9

Above the valley of the , at an altitude of more than sky had become obscured, and that a snow storm was 15,000 feet. Bourne attempts to take a picture in the fast approaching ... I managed to get tlirough all the excruciating cold: operations, and the finished negative - though ratlier

weak, and not so good a picture as it would have been it

Everything wore an air ofthe wildest solitude and the the snow storm had not prevented my taking the view

- I it most profound desolation, and while I looked upon it I intended is still presentable, and keep as a memento almost shuddered with awe at the terrific dreariness of of the circumstances under which it was taken, and as the scene. But the cold was too intense to permit mc being, so far as I am aware, a photograph taken at the

to look long upon its stern and desolate grandeur, and greatest altitude ever yet attempted.'

while at this elevation I was anxious, if possible, to try his a picture; but to attempt it required all the courage and Bourne was later to exceed even this height when on Pass at 18,600 resolution 1 was possessed of. In the first place, having last trip he photographed the Manirung often frightened out no water I had to make a tire on the glacier and melt feet (5.4). Bourne's coolies were some snow. In the next place, the hands of my assistants of their wits at the lunatic persistence of this mad English- were so benumbed with cold that they could render man who undertook the most hazardous expeditions. mc no service in erecting the tent, and my own were Many of them consequently deserted, leaving tlicir nearly as bad. These obstacles having at length been freight by the roadside. It is with amazement tliat wc read overcome, on going to fix the camera I was greatly disappointed after much trouble to find that half the 93 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

of the unmitigated cheek of this photographer in the face doubt, greater, higher, and altogether more vast and of mutiny or desertion, though in other circumstances impressive ; but they are not so naked in their outline, he'd shown himself sensitive to the needs of his bearers: not so detached, do not contain so much variety, have no such beautiful fertile valleys amongst them, no lakes,

I had not gone a quarter ofa mile further when I came few waterfalls, and scarcely any of those fme-pointed upon another load, and yet another, left by the road side peaks which rise from broader summits and lift their as before. This was getting serious, and I vowed pyramids ofsnow to the skies. This striking and rugged vengeance against the rascals who had placed me in this character of the Alps is just what the artist loves, and difficulty. I was told that these men had no doubt hidden which gives such a pleasing charm and variety to all themselves in a village which I saw at a little distance well-chosen and well-executed views of that popular from the road. Taking a stout stick in my hand I set district. Here the mountains are all alike, all having the out in search of them, in a mood not the most amiable. same'general features and outlines, presenting in the

After searching several houses unsuccessfully my aggregate, from their immense extent and size, a scene attention was attracted to another, where two women grand and impressive, doubtless, but wanting in variety.' stood at the door watching the proceedings. I fancied they looked guilty, and at once charged them with But Bourne was yet to explore the area in which lies the concealing my coolies. "Nay sahib; koee admee nahe hy source of the , and he acknowledges that the mera ghur pur ; coolie nahe hy.' (No sir ; there is no reputed sublimity of its scenery may even surpass that of man in my house ; there is no coolie.) Not satisfied with . Indeed, only a few paragraphs later, he is this answer I walked in, and soon discovered my already qualifying his previous remarks: friends hiding beneath a charpoy or bed, and dragging them forth made them feel the 'quality' of my stick, As I sat down to rest on a grassy mound contemplating amid the cries and lamentations of the aforesaid this scene a feeling of melancholy seemed to steal over females.'

I Op. cit. 2} November 1866.

In describing his ten-month trip (1864) Bourne lack of the picturesque in Himalayan comments on the Samuel Bourne:From his own album c. 1870. This is not captioned landscapes, how-ever awe-inspiring they appear, and in but there is such a close resemblance to his photographs in later life that there can be little doubt that it is him. We* collodion. this respect, both for painting and for photography in so far as it aspires to the conditions ofpainting, the romantic subject and scale of the Swiss alps is preferable:

The scenery in some places was grand and impressive, huge mountains, frequently clothed with forests of pine, towered aloft on every hand, my little path winding about them ; sometimes ascending far up, only to dip again deep into the valleys ; occasionally crossing a ravine in which a mass of snow still lay imbedded from the fall of last winter. And yet, with all its ponderous magnificence and grandeur, strange to say this scenery was not w ell adapted for pictures - at least for photography.

I may here pause for a moment to remark that the character of the Himalayan scenery in general is not picturesque. I have not yet seen Switzerland, except in some of M. Bisson'sand Mr England's photographs; but, judging from these, and from the numerous descriptions I have read of it, I should say that it is far more pleasing and picturesque than any part 1 have yet seen of the Himalayas. The mountains here arc, no

I Boumc. 'Narrative of a Photographic Trip to Kashmir (Cashmere) and Adjacent Districts', The British Journal ofPhotography, 19 October : . . !

TRAVELLING MAN 93

travelling and the twelfth was in the act of doing so when he lost me, as it had done on several occasions when footing and came right down upon the tent and mc among these tremendous hills. Here was I, a solitary his went the table and smash went the bottles, lonely wanderer, going Heaven knew where, surrounded Down soon as I collodion, developers, fixer, and measures ! As by the gloomy solitude ofinterminable mountains myself I rushed out and saw the pony which seemed, in fact, to stretch to infmity on every could extricate and walk offuninjurcd; but how was I to replace hand. To attempt to grasp or comprehend their extent get up and glasses? By turning the broken was impossible, and the achmg mind could only retire my precious bottles and bringing two or three brandy . . ones to account, into itself, feeling but an atom in a world so mighty work.' notion of bottles into use, I contrived to carry on my It IS of course totally impossible to give any the scenes and distances like these by the camera ; Mindful of the vastncss of the Himalayan landscape. distances would run into each other and be lost in one is proudly defiant about his use of large plates, indistinguishable hazy line, where the eye could trace Bourne and he speaks disdainfully of the trivial scale of small that receding succession which conveys the idea of detect a degree of conceit here in view immense extent and distance. The photographer can photographs. We of the Herculean obstinacy with which he lugged (or had only deal successfully w ith 'bits' and comparatively photographic supplies up colour as w'ell lugged) those immense loads of short distances ; but the artist, w ho has and down the precipitous paths of the High Himalayas. as outline to convey the idea of distance, might here comments on the aesthetic advantages ot the large fmd something worth coming for. If our artists at hoiiie, His over the small are rare in the early literature who are crowding on the heels of each other and of photography. They belong to a period when the painting continually the same old scenes which have democratisation of the photographic process, in its been painted a hundred times betore, would only creater availability and ease of operation, stiffened the summon up courage to visit the Himalayas, they would determination of many photographers to hold out tor find new subjects enough for a lifetime, or a hundred furnish to people at home Art: lifetimes . . . They would also some idea of what the Himalayas are really like, which allowed the digression, I would like to ask we of the camera can hardly do. If I might be here if any photographer at home ever now works The effects which I have sometimes witnessed in the plates of 12 x lo and upwardsrjudging from the evening, just before sunset, have been such as will large everyone seems to confine his attention to remain impressed on my memory for ever - effects journals, small plates - stereoscopic, or even smaller size - and which must be seen to be felt, since no description can or 'pocket' cameras seem to be all the 'go' . . conjure up to the reader the magic and almost dreamlike 'satchel' skies all know that it is much easier to get faultless on . . often We visions which the writer has witnessed . How small plates by any process than on large, and hence, I have I lamented that the camera was powerless to cope suppose, the reason why we seldom or never hear of with these almost ideal scenes, and that with all its large plates being worked by a dry process. But what is truthfulness it can give no true idea ot the solemnity of these bits of pictures when they arc obtained? and grandeur which twilight in a vast mountainous the use they worth the trouble of preparing and developing, region reveals partly to the sense and partly to the Are travelling perhaps hundreds of miles to get? They imagination.' and are simply looked upon as scraps, however good tlicy pretensions to pkliircs, and, making may be ; they have no The trials and tribulations of the explorer-photographer views, which his mis- an exception in favour of stereoscopic were many. Here is Bourne's account ot one of have a special interest of their own, one attaches little haps after setting up his photographic tent on a narrow importance to these diminutive transcripts ot nature, path poised high up on the slope ot a mountain which really convey no impression ot the grandeur

represent. I confess that if servant and effect of the scenes they I was engaged in developing a plate when my they could be enlarged salisJMorily there might be somc informed me that twelve laden ponies were waiting to but can they be r had yet reason tor employing such small plates ; pass. I kept them waiting for some time, and enlargements that I have never yet seen or heard ofany another picture to take, but the men getting impatient I equal to photographs taken direct from nature, allowed them to pass by going a little up the slope above were me to /arjjc and went and till such can be produced commend my tent. I saw five or six pass over safely such pictures taken direct in the camera ; for when inside to prepare another plate. Eleven had crossed,

wriucn from SmJa. 27 June 1 866. I Op. cic. 8 February 1867, I Ibid. 23 November 1866. 94 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

'•ns^tTi

Colonel Henr/ Wood: His chemicals, dark tent for sensitising and developing plates, baths, camera and , lenses and cases - the kind of equipment Bourne was using in India at much the same time.

pictures are artistically chosen, properly lighted, and Many photographers, before and after Bourne, saw the cleanly and skilfully manipulated, they possess a charm camera as a means of satisfying their curiosity about the

which never tires, and when looking at them they almost outside world, and that also of a picture-minded public make one feel as though one stood in the very presence stimulated by a newly risen pictorial press. The story of of the scenes themselves. I admit that it is not an easy travellers with a camera has not \et completely been told. matter to manipulate large plates successfully, and that From the very beginning, many determined men and they involve considerable expense and trouble ; but women lugged photographic equipment, not infrequent- when people are blacking their fingers and spending ly as cumbersome as that of Bourne, to almost every their cash in photography, why not aim at something explored and unexplored spot on this shrinking earth.

that shall be worth looking at when it is finished, and What such images meant in terms of the present much give themselves and friends some pleasure in beholding? vaunted 'global village', and what cfiect they most un-

I take it that one good large picture that can be framed doubtedly have had on the human psyche is yet to be and hung up in a room is worth a hundred little bits determined.

pasted in a scrap-book ; and twenty such pictures taken on any givenjourney, of the best subjects only, would yield an amount of pleasure and satisfaction which

whole boxes full of small negatives could never impart.'

I Bourne, 'A Photographic Journey through the Higher Hii alayas'. The British Journal oj Photography, 18 March 1870. r'^ f*^ ^x.

Itw

.

;e deodars in the snow. SIMLA «***

^'^•'^•c *i

-'MUEL BOURNE. VIEW NEAR CHINl '\H X

54 SAMUEL BOURNE THE MANIRUNG PASS NE AND SHEPHERD: THE REVERSING STATION. BHON GH S.6 JOHNTHOMSC- ICf 5.7 DUNMORE AND CRITCHERSON: WAN AND BOY ON FuOATING , .~b!--JC-

WHEN I WAS A PHOTOGRAPHER

"The theory of photography can be learnt in an hour; the first ideas of how

to go about it in a day.. ..What can t be learnt. ..is the feeling for light — the

artistic appreciation of effects produced by different or combined sources;

it's the understanding of this or that effect following the lines of the features which requires your artistic perception." Nodar (1857) NADARS STUDIO, 35 BOULEVARD DES CAPUCINES 'M^:m^

GEORGE EASTMAN; NADAR TAKEN \ I NO. 2 SODA

Felix Tournachon (1S20-1910), who called himself Nadar, became a legend in his own time. Indisputably, Nadar was the best known, indeed most notorious, photographer m France in the last half of the nineteenth century. He was a man of many parts; a man with 'double viscera' as his friends said. His career, from medical student and Montmartre Bohemian at nineteen, to spy, journalist, novelist, caricaturist of note, art critic, photographer, balloonist and pioneer in the advocacy of heavier than air flight, was as adventurous as that ot Jules : ;

I06 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Verne's hero in his JoiiTiiey from the Earth to the Moon: of all the practical inventions the nineteenth century Michel Ardan, the character inspired by Verne's admired bequeathed to mankind, the miraculous one of photo- fnend, Nadar. Everyone knew Nadar. And most ot the graphy, utilitarian though it was, partook at the same artistic and intellectual aristocracy of nineteenth-century time in the impenetrable mysteries of the spirit world. France sat tor his camera trom 1853, when he opened his The following, an extract from one ot Nadar's books, first photographic studio in Paris. was written, we ought to note, in the high period of

In a sardonic appraisal of photography in 1857, Nadar European spiritualism during which a number of emi- shows himselfextremely sensitive to the possible aesthetic nent figures interested themselves in what we now call deterioration the widespread use of the medium could extra-sensory perception, psycho-kinesis and, not least, produce: . Nadar writes of Balzac's dread of the

occult powers of photography, and it is tempting to

Photography is a miraculous discovery, a science which think that both their attitudes conveyed a psychological is pursued by the highest minds, an art which sharpens expression of redress against the realit)' ofthe photograph the wisest wics - and whose application is within the and the consequent demystification of art (as it has powers ofthe greatest. This wonderful art which makes felicitously been called). What could be better than to something out ofnothing, this miraculous invention insinuate a metaphysical content into the actuality of the after which one can believe in anything, this insoluble photograph itself? problem for which the learned men who solved it some

20 years ago arc still looking for a name, this But those many new miracles will have to wane before photography which, with applied electricity and the most astonishing, the most disturbing of all : the chloroform, makes our the greatest of all one which seems finally to give to man the power to centuries, this supernatural photography is practised create, in his turn, by giving substance to the disembodied each day in every house, by the first comer as well as ghost which vanishes as soon as seen without leaving the last, because it has created a meeting point for all the a shadow in the glass of the mirror, a ripple on the water dead heads of all the professions. Everywhere you can of the pool. Could not man himself believe that he was see working at photography an artist who has never creating in fact when he seized, caught, materialised painted, a tenor without a contract, and I undertake to the intangible, retaining the fugitive image, the light, turn with one lesson your coachman and your concierge etched by him today on the hardest metal? In truth

- and I speak in all seriousness - into yet another two Niepce and his fme friend were wise to wait to be born. photographic technicians. The theory ofphotography The Church has always shown itself cool towards can be learnt in an hour ; the first ideas of how to go innovators - when she wasn't being a little too warm about it in a day . . . What can't be learnt ... is the feeling towards them - and the discovery of 1 842 [sic] had for light - the artistic appreciation of effects produced by doubtful attractions to the lord of all. This mystery different or combined sources ; it's the understanding ot smacks of the devil at his spells and stinks of the stake this or that effect following the lines of the features the heavenly roasting-spit has been warmed up for much

which requires your artistic perception. What is taught less . . . The night, dear to sorcerers, reigned alone in the even less, is the instinctive understanding of your subject murky depths of the camera obscura, the chosen place

- it's this immediate contact winch can put you in appointed for the Prince of Darkness ... It isn't sympathy with the sitter, helps you to sum them up, surprising then if, at first, admiration herselfseemed follow their normal attitudes, their ideas, according to uncertain ; she appeared disturbed, as if she was scared their personality, and enables you to make not just a it took time before the Universal Animal pulled himself chancy, dreary, cardboard copy typical of the merest together and approached the Monster. In front of the hack in the , but a likeness of the most Daguerreotype, this fear was shown 'from the lowest .' intimate and happy kind, a speaking likeness . . to the highest', as the popular saying goes, and the imtutored or illiterate were not alone in showmg this

The bluff and down-to-earth Nadar would seem to have hesitation as distrustful as it was superstitious. More than been the last person to fmd in photography a metaphysi- one among the great minds suffered from this complaint cal meaning and he takes a certain poetic glee in his of first refusal. To take an example from among the facetious assessment ofphotography's mysterious nature. greatest : Balzac felt ill at ease before the new marvel,

Yet one suspects that he really delighted in the idea that, he could not get ri d ofa vague dread ofthe Daguerreotype operation. He had worked out an explanation for I Part ofevidence presented to a tribunal when claiming his right to use himself, as well as could be at that time, taking on here the name 'Nadar', 12 December 1857. Bibliothcquc Nationalc Cat. des Estampes Na 163/41. and there fantastical theorisings a la Cardan. I think I . .

WH£N I WAS A PHOTOGRAPHER 10?

' s .idar's immense energies (as I have noted, he was an avid

iid accomplished aeronaut, writer and caricaturist as well), coupled with an insatiable curiosity, led him to explore the possibilities of photographing the unseen urban landscape from above - in a balloon - and fi'om below, using new techniques in artificial lighting in the catacombs and sewers of Paris. With great relish he writes in retrospect of his adventures. On aerial photo- graphy about 1858:

Feverishly I set about organising the laboratory that I had to get into the basket, because at that date we hadn t yet reached those blessed days w hen our nephews could carry a whole laboratory in their pockets, and we had to do our own stuff [notre cuisine] up there on the spot. So everything was there, all the kit, in its place. And

nothing could be forgotten for it wouldn't really be convenient to come up and down too often. The basket was arranged as perfectly as could be; it

IS as spacious as the balloon would allow - si.x hundred

. ibic meters of this to lift nothing more than the uaching cables, my assistant and me. Everything inside was neatly to hand, packed or hung in place. We were quite at home there, and the rue Possibly Gavarni and Silv/: Baf: Bensch quickly changed his cubby-hole on Fontaine-Saint-Georges for our aenal laborator\-, a real from which he teased the stars. can remember seeing his particular theory set out by him umbrella cover In the space below the balloon was hung the tent, a at length in some comer ofthe great spread of his double layer, black and orange, which kept out all the works. I haven't the time to dig it out but my memory sunlight, with a very httle window ofa photogenic recalls very clearly the long-winded dissertation that glass gave me just the amount ot he made when we once met and which he repeated yellow which illumination I needed. It was hot underneath it tor the another time (for he seemed to be obsessed with it), in worker and the work. But our collodion and our other that tiny flat hung round with purple in which he lived materials were reliable, kept in their ice-buckets. at the comer of the rue Richelieu and the Boulevard . . camera, fastened vertically, was a Dallmeyer. That So, according to Balzac, every body in its natural state My speaks for itself And the triggering ofthe horizontal was made up ofa series of ghostly images superimposed - that I had dreamed up - another patent ! for infmity, wrapped in infinitesimal films . . in layers to - and closing it with a single continuous action Man never having been able to create, that's to say opening make something material from an apparition, from worked impeccably. I had anticipated as well as I could the something impalpable, or to make from nothing, an Finally vibrations of the basket. The force ofour ascent was object - each Daguerrian operation was therefore going such that the holding cables - which came not from to lay hold of, detach and use up one of the layers of cratt, were fear ot the basket but from the ring encircling the the body on which it focused. . . Was Balzac's so that they could allow the balloon to expand or the Daguerreotype real or feigned? It was real. Balzac set shrink. Besides, I intended to fly only in calm weather, had more to gain than to lose, the amplitude of his and if the elasticity of my rigging seemed strained at paunch and the rest of his body making it possible the desired height of 300 metres, I could descend to 200, for him to be prodigal of his 'ghosts' without having or to 1 00 - it had to succeed. to count them. In any case it didn't prevent him from posing at least once for that unique Daguerreotype by On artificial light: Gavarni and Silvy which I owned, now handed over to M. Spoelberg de Louvenjoul.' ... at that time (18 j8) electricity was still tar removed simplifications that developed so Toumichon).QiMiia;Vlo/j;);ioM«M/i/it(Pirisiyoo). from the really useful 1 Nadir (Felix : : :

I08 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Nadar and assistant: Four aerial views of Pans from an eight part negative processed in a balloon basket. 1868. (Altitude 520 metres, i wet collodion).

quickly, as it were, with giant strides. We didn't have the precious portable accumulators, nor Gaulard's

intermediary generators, nor all the other facilities that exist now, and we were reduced to all the awkward inconveniences of the Bunsen battery. No alternative.

Thus I had an experienced electrician set up tor me, along the glassed-in balcony ot my studio frontage on the boulevard dcs Capucines, fifty medium lights^

which I hoped would be and which were to be sufficient

to give me the illumination I wanted. I got over the problems and difficulties of installation and operation; they were quite trivial in comparison with tiie obstacles

I was to encounter later on - handling portable lights.

Nadar tried some self-portraits indoors first - then

Indifferent, and even horrible as were these first results, rumours of the experiments spread through our little

photographic world where everyone keeps tabs on liis

neighbor, and I was promptly invited to talk to the Cercle and to the newspaper, la Press scieiitijiqm; then located in the rue Richelieu, on the side of the Pradicr fountain - Pradier, that nice but uneven sculptor. Preault said of him, 'He sets ofFeach morning for Athens and comes back each evening via the place Breda*.

Nadar lugged all his equipment to the offices of the news- paper and there made some trials

These first plates came out hard, with heightened effects, solid blacks, blocked out without detail on every face. The pupils of the eyes were either like two gimlet holes, crudely blacked in, or bleached out with an excess of

light.

In iS6i Nadar spent three excruciating months photo- graphing subterranean Paris, accounting for at least lOO

more or less successful negatives

The possibility of photographing by artificial light was

therefore already a fact ; it no w only remained to apply

it to the project I dreamed of.

I N.idar used these Ian customed sight drew

Nadar studio: Model of an experimental steam 'h^licoptere"

engine designed by Pontin d'Amecourt. 1 863. exhibited by

Nadar at a meeting in his studio on 30 July 1 863 at which time he advocated 'heavier-than-air' machines as a better solution to the problems of flight than balloons. Wet collodion. ! . :

WHEN I WAS A PHOTOGRAPHER 1 09

The world underground offered an infinite field of activity no less interesting than that of the top surface.

We were going into it, to reveal the mysteries of its deepest, most secret, caverns. But without going so far at the start, and to begin at the begmning, a primary task was right under our very feet: [to explore] the catacombs of Paris, though they did not have the solemn associations, the pious lessons, of the Roman catacombs, they yet had secrets to tell us, and above all w'e could show the remarkable achievement, human resourcefulness displayed in the network of the Parisian sewers. We have passed over the catacombs, only giving up to this point a very summary indication of our working procedure - of which the real difficulties were going to come out above all in the city drain . .

... I cannot tell you how many times our work was interrupted, held up for one reason or another. At one time the weakened acids had been insufficiently brought up to strength and we had to stop with all our gear

[literally, with the rifle resting down at the feet, when one is otherwise ready to shoot] in those regions - far from agreeable. Twice I had to change the mechanism which operated our hght stands. Must I spell out again Nadar: 'Chambre du Pont Notre Dame' one of a series on fans were let down and angry when after several how we sewers photographed by electric light. The arc lamps were attempts at a tricky shot, at the moment when all connected by wires through manhole covers to Bunsen batteries

in the streets above. 1861 . collodion. precautions had been taken, all impediments removed Wet or dealt with, the decisive moves being about to take Nadar: The Pans catacombs by electric light. 1861. place - all of a sudden, in the last seconds ofthe exposure'. Wet collodion a mist arising from the waters would fog the plate - and what oaths were issued against the belle dame or bon monsieur above us, who without suspecting our presence, pickedjust that moment to renew their bath water

Wc might note that Nadar's presence in the Parisian sewers elicited from him some nintecnth-ccntury eco- logical reflections on the waste of all the muck in the drains, how Victor Hugo wrote about the way the

Chinese use it all, while the French are importing chemi-

cals in huge quantities and at great cost from Peru

As for us, at great expense we send ships to Peru to bring back what wc have disdainfully thrown away, eager to

be rid of it. We throw it away and yet Barral, in his

A(;riciiliurcd Trilogy reckons that our farms lose each

year natural fertilisers equivalent to a production of forty million hectolitres- of wheat. All our agricultural

economists, all the specialists, all the Boussingaults, all the Liebigs, the Grandcaus, continually, every day, cry

1 Nadar notes that sonic exposures took up t eighteen minutes:

'Remember that we were still using collodion . 2 One hefloliire equals 2-75 bushels. .

no PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

out against such an incomprehensible madness. But

who bothers to listen to them, still less to understand them, and our unfathomable human stupidity persists

in losing for us, in Pans alone, hundreds of millions ot

francs worth of valuable material each year, and it

goes to poison our tish . .

Nadar studio; Interior of 35 Boulevard des Capucines, showing some of Nadar's art collection, including Daunnier's Washerwoman' and a Corot landscape, c, I86S. Wet collodion.

Nadar'sstudio 1872-1887,51 Rue d'Anjou. Balcony and glass wall of studio. Nadar handed over the studio to his son Paul in 1887 and this photograph was probablv taken c. 1910. Vf /-^

NADAR: SELF • PORTRAIT NADAR ALEXANDRE D'

6,-l NADAR; GEORGE SAND AS LOUIS XI .

THE INDELIBLE RECORD

It is a novel experiment to attempt to illustrate o book of travels with photographs, a few years back so perishable, and so difficult to reproduce.

But the art is now so far advanced, that we can multiply the copies with the some facility, and print them with the same materials as in the cose of woodcuts or engravings. John Thomson (1873)

OHN THOMSON: SCENES FROM STRttI LIFE IN LONDON

Perhaps the most comprehensive assessment in tlie nnicteenth century of tlic appH-

cability of the photographic medium as a means for producing factual records

exists in two articles by the elder Oliver Wendell Holmes, father of the American jurist. They both appeared in the Atlantic Monthly magazine: the first in 1857, the

other in 1863, at a time when the were bitterly divided in the con-

flict of Civil War. I reproduce here a few excerpts from the two extensive and exquisitely written texts: 122 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Oh, infinite volumes ot poems that I treasure m this The very things which an artist would leave out, or small library of glass and pasteboard ! I creep over the render impcrtectly, the photograph takes inlinite care vast features of Rameses, on the face of his rock-hewn with, and so makes its illusions perfect. What is the

Nubian temple ; I scale the huge mountain-crystal that picture of a drum without the marks on its head where calls itself the Pyramid ot Cheops. I pace the length ot the beating ot the sticks has darkened the parchment? the three Titanic stones ot the wall ot Baalbec, - In three pictures ot the Ann Hathaway Cottage, before mightiest masses ot quarried rock that man has lifted us - the most perfect, perhaps, of all the paper into the air; and then I dive into some mass of toliage stereographs we have seen - the door at the farther end with my microscope, and trace the vcinings ot a leat so of the cottage is open, and we see the marks lett by the delicately wrought in the painting not made with hands, rubbing ofhands and shoulders as the good people that I can almost sec its down and the green aphis came through the entry, or leaned against it, or felt for that sucks itsjuiccs. I look mto the eyes ot the caged the latch . . . We have got the truit ot creation now, and tiger, and on the scaly train ot the crocodile, stretched need not trouble ourselves with the core. Every on the sands ot the river that has mirrored a hundred conceivable object of Nature and Art will soon scale off dynasties. I stroll through RJienish vineyards, I sit Its surface for us. Men will hunt all curious, beautiful, under Roman arches, I walk the streets ot once buried grand objects, as they hunt the cattle in South America, cities, I look into the chasms of Alpine glaciers, and on tor their skins, and leave the carcasses as of little worth. the rush ot wastetul cataracts. I pass, in a moment, from The consequences of this will soon be such an the banks of the Charles to the tord ot the Jordan, and enormous collection ot torms that they will have to be leave my outward frame in the arm-chair at my table, classified and arranged in vast libraries, as books are while in spirit I am looking down upon Jerusalem trom now. The time will come when a man who wishes to the Mount of Olives. see any object, natural or artificial, will go to the

'Give me the full tide of life at Charing Cross,' said Imperial, National, or City Stereographic Library and

Dr Johnson. Here is Charing Cross, but without the call for Its skin or torm, as he would for a book at any .' full tide of life. A perpetual stream ot figures leaves no common library . . definite shapes upon the picture.' But on one side ot We should be led on too far, if we develop our belief this stereoscopic doublet a little London 'gent' is leaning as to the transtormations to be wrought by this greatest earthly conditions, the pensively against a post ; on the other side he is seen of human triumphs over sitting at the foot of the next post; - what is the matter million with the little 'gent'? I By 1856. the London Stereoscopic Company alone sold a half around the world, and offered 10,000 different views. By

the title list had to 100,000. I Because of the lengthy exposure time. 1858, jumped

Stereo card of Niagara Falls Ice Mountain, late 1860s. Wet collodion.

%'ai*i'«» i^'m*'* » . ; . . ..

THE INDELIBLE RECORD 123

divorce of form and substance. Let our readers fill out the emotions excited by the actual sight of the suined a blank check on the future as they like - we give our and sordid scene, strewed with rags and wrecks, came indorsement to their imaginations beforehand.' back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we would have buried the mutilated remains

. . honest On the Civil War: of the dead they too vividly represented . The a sunshine ... gives us .. . some conception of what this The field of photography is extending itself to embrace repulsive, brutal, sickening, hideous thing it is, frantic mobs to which we give subjects of strange and sometimes of fearful interest . . dashing together of two

We now have before us a series of photographs showing the name of armies . . of the field of Antietam and the surrounding country, as It is a relief to soar away from the contemplation they appeared after the great battle of the 17th of these sad scenes and fly in the balloon which carried September. These terrible mementos of one ot the most Messrs. King and Black in their aerial photographic is lying before sanguinary conllicts of the war we owe to the enterprise excursion . . . One of their photographs us. as the eagle and the wild goose see it, is a of Mr Brady of New York . . Boston, the same place as the solid Let him who wishes to know what war is look at this very different object from chimneys. The Old series of illustrations. These wrecks of manliood thrown citizen looks up at its eaves and landmarks not to be together in careless heaps or ranged in ghastly rows South and Trinity Church are two mistaken. Washington Street slants across the picture for burial were alive but yesterday . . . Many people winds as if the cowpath would not look through this series. Many, having seen as a narrow cleft. Milk Street gave it a name had been followed by the it and dreamed of its horrors, would lock it up in some which palaces. Window s, chimneys, secret drawer, that it might not thrill or revolt those builders of its commercial the eye in the central parts of whose soul sickens at such sights. It was so nearly like and the skylights attract

bewildering in numbers . . visiting the battlefield to look over these views, that all the view, exquisitely defined, While the aeronaut is looking at our planet from the

I 'The and ihe Stereograph", loc. cit. vault of heaven where he hangs suspended, and seizing the image of the scene beneath him as he flies, the Aerial view of Boston taken 13 October James Wallace Black: astronomer is causing the heavenly bodies to print their Samuel Archer King. Black was 1 860 from the balloon of Prof. images on the sensitive sheet he spreads under the rays partner in the firm of Black & Batchelder which also included taken Dunmore and Critcherson (5.7) Wet collodion. concentrated by his telescope. We have formerly occasion to speak of the wonderful stereoscopic figures of the moon taken by Mr De la Rue in England, by Mr Rutherford and by Mr Whipple in this country. To these most successful experiments must be added that of Dr Henry Draper, who has constructed a reflecting telescope, with the largest silver in the world, except that of the Imperial Observatory at

Paris, for the special purpose of celestial photography . .

In the last 'Annual of Scientific Discovery' are interesting notices of photographs of the sun, showing

the spots on his disk, ofJupiter with liis belts, and Saturn with his ring. While the astronomer has been reducing the heavenly bodies to the dimensions of his stereoscopic slide, the anatomist has been lifting the invisible by the aid of

his microscope into palpable dimensions, to remain permanently recorded in the handwriting of the sun

himself. . . Of all the microphotograplis [photomicrographs) we have seen, those made by Dr John Dean, of Boston, from his own sections ot the spinal cord, arc the most remarkable for the light they

throw on the minute structure ot the body • . When

the enlarged image is suffered to delineate itself, as in Dr Dean's views of the medulla oblongata [the lowest ! !

124 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

part ot the brain], there is no room to question the imsrepresents. He is to the campaigns of the republic exactness of the portraiture . . . These later achievements what Vandermeuien was to the wars of Louis XIV. His ot Dr Dean have excited much attention here and in pictures, though perhaps not as lasting as the battle Europe, and pomt to a new epoch of anatomical and pieces on the pyramids, will none the less immortalise physiological delineation.' those introduced in them. Brady has shown more pluck than many ofthe The vicissitudes of the war photographer were nicely- officers and soldiers who were in the fight. He went - enunciated when the American Journal ofPlwtooraphY, on not exactly like the 'Sixty-Ninth,' stripped to the pants -

I August 1861, commented on the retreat of the Union but with his sleeves tucked up and his big camera troops in the first battle of Bull Run in the early days of directed upon every point ot interest on the field. the American Civil War: Some pretend, indeed, that it was the mysterious and formidal)le-looking instrument that produced the panic

The irrepressible photographer, like the warhorsc, snuffs The runaways, it is said, mistook it for the great steam the battle from afar. We have heard oftwo photographic gun discharging 500 balls a minute, and immediately parties in the rear of the Federal army, on its advance took to their heels when they got within its focus into Virginia. One of these got so far as the smoke of However this may be, it is certain that they did not get Bull's Run, and was aiming the never-failing tube away from Brady as easily as they did from the enemy. at friends and foes alike, when with the rest of our He has fixed the cowards beyond the possibility of a Grand Army they were completely routed and took to doubt. their heels, leaving their photographic accoutrements Foremost among them the observer will perhaps on the ground, which the rebels, no doubt, pounced notice the well-known correspondent ofthe London upon as trophies ofvictory. Perhaps they considered ,^ the man who was celebrated for writing graplnc camera an infernal machine. The soldiers live to fight letters when there was nobody to contradict him, but another day, our special friends to make again their who had proved, by his correspondence from this photographs. country, that but little confidence can be placed in his

accounts. See him as he flies for dear life, with his notes The famous photographer ot the Civil War, Mathew sticking out ofhis pockets, spurring his wretched-looking Brady (1823-96), no doubt led one of the beleaguered steed, his hat gone, and himself the picture ot abject parties referred to. For on that occasion Brady and his despair. assistants not oijy took the armies in battle and in dis- Butjoking aside, this collection is the most curious array, but with ajoumalist's instinct he turned his camera and interesting wc have ever seen. The groupings ot on the stricken carriage crowd who'd come from Wash- entire regiments and divisions, within a space of a couple mgton u ith picmc lunches to watch, from a high vantage ot square tcet, present some ot the most curious effects point, their army beat the ' Rebs'. Those particular photo- as yet produced in photography. Considering the graphs, sad to say. great social documents as they were, circumstances under which they were taken, amidst seem no longer to be in existence. But the others of the the excitement, the rapid movements, and the smoke battle itself were widely distributed. of the battlefield, there is nothing to compare with Brady received the highest praise for his courage and them in their powerful contrasts of light and shade.^ determination, and his pictures were valued for their authenticity far more than the accounts of newspaper John Thomson (1837-1921) is best known for his part in correspondents: producing an extraordinary photographic series called

Street Life in London, published in 1 877. His is perhaps the

The public is indebted to Brady of Broadway for his first ofsuch documentary photographs to appear in con- numerous excellent views of "grim-visaged war'. He junction with a text (by Adolphe Smith), and is a direct has been in Virginia with his camera,' and many and descendant of Henry Mayhew's famous London Labour spirited are the pictures he has taken. His are the only and the London Poor (185 1-62). Mayhew himself had con- reliable records at Bull's Run. The correspondents of templated using photographs to illustrate his books but, the Rebel newspapers are sheer falsifiers ; the because of certain drawbacks in the medium and the correspondents of the Northern journals are not to be primitive reproduction techniques at the time, he used depended upon, and the correspondents of the English

1 Russell of Tlie Times who earlier had covered the press are altogether worse than either ; but Brady never The famous W. H. Crimean War. 2 Humphrey's Journal, Vol. XII, 1861-2, cited in James D. Horan,

1 'Doings of the Sunbeam', loc. cit. Malhew Brady: Hislcriaii ifirli a Camera, Crown. New York, I<)55. THE INDELIBLE RECORD 125

wood-engravings instead, though many of these were aaually based on Daguerreotypes. Like Mayhew's text,

* that ofThomson and Smith is sensitive, sympathetic, .in reproduces the fascinating palaver of the urban ghcf

without any intention of ridicuHng it:

London Somades

The class of Nomades with which 1 propose to deal

[in this instalment] makes some show ofindustry. These people attend fairs, markets, and hawk cheap ornaments or useful wares from door to door. At certain seasons

this class "works' regular wards, or sections ot the city

and suburbs. At other seasons its members migrate to the provinces, to engage m harvesting, hop-picking, or

to attend fairs, where they figure as owners of 'Puff and Darts', 'Spin 'em rounds', and other games. Their movements, however, are so uncertain and erratic, as to render them generally unable to name a day when they will shift their camp to a new neighbourhood. Changes of locality with them, are partly caused by caprice, panly by necessit)'. At times sickness may drive them to seek change of air, or some trouble comes upon them, or a sentimental longing leads them to the green lanes, and budding hedge-rows of the country. As a rule, they are improvident, and. like most Nomades, unable to follow any intelligent plan of life. To them the John Thomson; Lo.'.cc. ;.o.T.ices. 1. .r... .'.c^----,- *-,,:•- future is almost as uncertain, and as far beyond their control, as the changes of wind and weather. over the Mongolian London gipsies proper are a distinct class, to which, me of the Nomades who wander their tlocks and herds, however, many of the Nomades I am now describing steppes, drifting about with pastures. are in some way allied. The traces of kinship may be seeking the purest springs and greenest ot a roving life, noted in their appearance as well as in their mode ot He honestly owned his restless love to settle in any fixed spot. He ako held life, although some of them are as careful to disclaim and his inability the most what they deem a discreditable relationship as are the that the progress ofeducation was one of spoke in a tone gipsies to boast of their purity of descent from old dangerous symptoms of the times, and children Romany stock. of deep regret of the manner in which decent The accompanying photograph, taken on a piece ot were forced now-a-days to go to school. "Edication,

I want with edication? Edication to vacant land at Battersca, represents a friendly group sir I Why what do gathered around the caravan ot William Hampton, a them what has it makes them wusser. They knows That's man who enjoys the reputation among his fellows, ot tricks what don't b'long to the nat'ral gent. my

a sight too much, tliey do ! No being 'a fair-spoken, honest gentleman.' Nor has 'pinion. They knows subsequent intercourse with the gentleman in question offence, sir. There's good gents and Idnd'arted scholards, knows most led me to suppose that his character has been unduly no doubt. But when a man is bad, and God chaps overrated. He had never enjoyed the privilege of of us aint wery good, it makes him wuss. Any write and education, but matured in total ignorance of the arts ot of my acquaintance what knows how to reading and writing. count proper aint much to be trusted at a bargain. this dread education is not generally This I found to be the condition of many of his Happily of altliough, at the same associates, and also ofother families of hawkers whicli characteristic ofthe London poor,

it is shared by many men of the class of which I have visited. time,

is fair type. William Hampton is, for all that, a man of fair William Hampton a intelligence and good natural ability. But the lack of While admitting that his conclusions were probably education other than that picked up in the streets and justified by his experience, 1 caused a diversion by highways, has impressed upon him a stamp that reminded presenting him with a photograph, which he gleefully :

126 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

accepted. "Bless yc !' he exclaimed, 'that's old Mary destruction. The trifling sums that I paid for the privilege Pradd, sitting on the steps of the wan, wot was of taking such subjects would probably go to help in murdered in the Borough, middle of last month.' the purchase of a coffm, which, conveyed ceremoniously

This was a revelation so startling, that I at once to the old man's house, would there be deposited to determined to make myself acquainted with the await the hour of dissolution, and the body of the parent particulars ofthe event. whom his son had honoured with the gift. Let none of

my readers suppose that I am speaking injest. To such Then follows a bizarre account (too lengthy to recount an extreme pitch has the notion of honouring ancestors here) of the fortunes and misfortunes of Mary Pradd. with due mortuary rites been carried in China, that an affectionate parent would regard children who should present him with a cool and comfortable coffm Thomson's travels in Chma with the camera afforded as having begun in good time to display the duty and him the opportunity of making some unusual ethno- respect which every well-regulated son and daughter logical observations is expected to bestow. The superstitious influences, such as I have described,

My design in the accompanying work is to present a rendered me a frequent object of mistrust, and led to my scries of pictures of China and its people, such as shall being stoned and roughly handled on more occasions convey an accurate impression of the country I traversed than one. It is, however, in and about large cities that as well as of the arts, usages, and manners which prevail the wide-spread hatred offoreigners is most conspicuously in ditferent provinces of the Empire. With this intention displayed. In many ofthe country districts, and from associated with Europeans, and I made the camera the constant companion ot my officials who have been benefits which wanderings, and to it I am indebted tor the faithful who therefore appreciate the substantial reproduction ofthe scenes I visited, and of the types of foreign intercourse can confer, I have met with as race with which I came into contact. numerous tokens of kindness, and a hospitality Those familiar with the Chinese and their deeply-rooted genuine as could be shown to a stranger in any part of superstitions will readily understand that the carrying the world. a out of my task involved both difficulty and danger. In It is a novel experiment to attempt to illustrate book some places there were many who had never yet set of travels with photographs, a few years back so eyes upon a pale-faced stranger; and the literati, or perishable, and so difficult to reproduce. But the art is educated classes, had fostered a notion amongst such as now so far advanced, that we can multiply the copies these, that, while evil spirits of every kind were with the same facility, and print them with the same carefully to be shunned, none ought to be so strictly materials as in the case of woodcuts or engravings. I feel avoided as the "Fan Qui' or 'Foreign Devil who somewhat sanguine about the success of the undertaking, applied assumed human shape, and appeared solely for the and I hope to see the process which I have thus such furtherance of his own interests, often owing the success adopted by other travellers ; for the faithfulness of of his undertakings to an ocular power, which enabled pictures affords the nearest approach that can be made him to discover the hidden treasures of heaven and towards placing the reader actualh' before the scene

earth. I therefore frequently enjoyed the reputation of which is represented.' being a dangerous geomancer, and my camera was held to be a dark mysterious instrument, which, combined with my naturally, or supernaturally, intensified eyesight gave me power to see through rocks and mountains, to pierce the very souls ofthe natives, and to produce miraculous pictures by some black art, which at the same time bereft the individual depicted ot so much of the principle of life as to render his death a certainty within a very short period of years. Accounted, for these reasons, the forerunner of death,

I found portraits of children difficult to obtain, while,

strange as it may be thought in a land where filial piety

is esteemed the liighest of virtues, sons and daughters John Thomson. Cliiim md Us Penplr. London 1873. In ihc last para- before the brought their aged parents to be placed graph he is referring to ihe Woodburytypc - the process which was foreigner's silent and mysterious instrument of used to illustrate the book. - " r- - • S^ ^- ' fei^ \\h\ I ^'"-xT^i'^ « T 11

7.1 WOOD AND GIBSON: FEDERAL MORTAR BATTERY. YORKTOWN. VIRGINJA 7.2 TIMOTHY H, OSULLIVAN: GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT'S COUNCIL OF WAR TRENCHES AT FORT MOHANE. VIRGIN(A Wf^^M

^ A" I

7.S GALTON AND MOHAMED: AN INQUIRY INTO THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF PHTHISIS BY THE METHOD Of COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE- 7.6 PHOTOGRAPHIC DEPARTMENT. OR BARNARDOS HOMES 7.7 D. O. HILL AND ROBERT ADAMSON: WOMAN /ylTn A GOIT

7.9 UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER. TWO AMERINDIAN WOMEN 7.(0 SAMUEL BOURNE; TODA VILLAGERS

2 JOHN THOMSON: PHYSIC STREET. CANTON

ANIMAL LOCOMOTION

...we have become so accustomed to see [the galloping horse] in art that it has imperceptibly dominated our understanding, and we think the repre- sentation to be unimpeachable, until we throw oH all our preconceived impressions on one side, and seek the truth by independent observation from Nature herself. Eadweard Muybridge (1898) • g.jJl^ 4 .^. IIL- 7 » U lU 11

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ANIMAL LOCOMOTION

In one of his many publications on animal locomotion deriving from his stupen- dous collection of sequential photographs produced by 1885, Eadweard Muybridgc^ (1830-1904) describes, at the end of the century, how his photographic procedures nearly led to the invention, not just of the 'movies', but of the 'talking picture' it- self:

Eadweard Muybridgc was bom Edward James Muggcridgc in Kingston-upon-Thaiiics. After emigrating to America he produced several extensive series of stereo and other photographs of the Far West before being engaged by Leiand Stanford, former Governor of CaUtomia, to undertake the experiment in equestrian locomotion. . . ;

142 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

In the spring of the year 1872, while the author was horse with all four of his feet clearly litted, at the same directing the photographic surveys ofthe United States time, above the surface of the ground . . Government on the Pacitic Coast, there was revived in Each of the photographs made at this time illustrated the city ot San Francisco a controversy in regard to a more or less different phase ot the trotting action.

animal locomotion . . . the principal subject of dispute Selecting a number of these, the author endeavoured to was the possibility ot a horse, while trotting - even at arrange the consecutive phases of a complete stride the height of his speed - having all tour ot his teet, at this, however, in consequence ot the irregularity of any portion of his stride, simultaneously tree trom their intervals, he was unable to satisfactorily accomplish. contact with the ground. It then occurred to him that a series of photographic The attention ot the author was directed to this images made in rapid succession at properly regulated controversy, and he immediately resolved to attempt intervals of time, or ot distance, would definitely set its settlement. The problem before him was, to obtain at rest the many existing theories and condictmg a sutficiently well-developed and contrasted image on opinions upon animal movements generally. a wet collodion plate, after an exposure of so brief a Having submitted his plans to Mr Leland Stanford, duration that a horse's foot, moving with a velocity ot who owned a number of thorough-breds, and first-class more than thirty yards [feet?] in a second of time, trotting horses, the author secured that gentleman's should be photographed with its outlines practically cooperation for a continuance of the researches at his - - sharp . . stock-farm now the site ofthe Umversity at Palo Alto. Having constructed some special exposing apparatus, His official and other duties, requiring absences from and bestowed more than usual care in the preparation the city on expeditions sometimes extending over of the materials he was accustomed to use tor ordinarily several months at a time, prevented continuous attention quick work, the author commenced his investigation to the investigation, but m the meanwhile he devised on the race-track at Sacramento, California, in May, a system for obtaining a succession ofautomatic 1872, where he in a tew days made several negatives exposures at intervals of time, which could be regulated of a celebrated horse, named Occident, while trotting, at discretion. laterally, in front of his camera, at rates ofspeed varying The apparatus used for this initiatory work included trom two minutes and twenty-tive seconds to two a motor-clock for making and breaking electric circuits, minutes and eighteen seconds per mile. w'hich is briefly described in the "Proceedings of the The photographs resulting trom this experiment Royal Institution of Great Britain,' March 13, 1882, were sufficiently sharp to give a recognisable silhouette and will be, with other arrangements, explained in portrait of the driver, and some of them exhibited the detail further on. . . .

ANIMAL LOCOMOTION I43

'.' -.;';'-:;; --. EadweardW-.- \ - -

Experiments were carried on from time to time as purpose caused one ofthese glass discs, when atuchcd opportunity- permitted; they were, however, principally to a central shaft, to revolve in front ot the condensing

tor private or personal use, and it was not until 1 878 lens of a projecting lantern, parallel with, and close to

that the results ofany ofthem were published . . another disc fixed to a tubular shaft which encircled the

Each ot the cameras used at this time had two lenses, other, and around which it rotated in the contrary

and made stereoscopic pictures. Selecting from these direction . . stereographs a suitable number ofphases to reconstitute To this instrument the author gave the name ot

a full stride, he placed the appropriate halves ofeach, Zoopraxiscope ; it is the first apparatus ever used, or respectively, in one of the scientific toys called the constructed, for synthetically demonstrating movements

zoetropc, or the wheel of lite - an instrument originated analytically photographed from life, and in its resulting

by the Belgian physicist Plateau, to demonstrate the effects is the prototype ofall the various instruments persistency of vision. These two zoetropcs were geared, which, under a variety of names, are used for a similar

and caused to revolve at the same rate ofspeed ; the purpose at the present day . .

respective halves ofthe stereographs were made It may here be parenthetically remarked that on the

simultaneously visible, by means of mirrors - arranged 27th of February, 1 888, the author, having contemplated on the principle ofWheatstone's reflecting stereoscope - some improvements of the zoopraxiscope, consulted successively and intermittently, through the perforations with Mr Thomas A. Edison as to the practicability ot

in the cylinders of the instruments, \\ ith the result ot a using that instrument in association with the phonograph very satisfactory reproduction of an apparently solid so as to combine, and reproduce simultaneously, in the miniature horse trotting, and ofanother galloping. presence ofan audience, visible actions and audible

Pursuing this scheme, the author arranged, in the words. At that time the phonograph had not been same consecutive order, on some glass discs, a number adapted to reach the ears of a large audience, so the ofequidistant phases ot certain movements; each scries, scheme was temporarily abandoned.' as before, illustrated one or more complete and recurring acts ot motion, or a combination ot them: Not unexpectedly, Muybridge's vast output ot sequen- for example, an athlete turning a somersault on horseback, tial photographs, showing humans and aninuls in each while the animal was cantering; a horse making a few phase of every conceivable movement, were voraciously strides of the gallop, a leap over a hurdle, another few seized upon, especially by those artists for whom objective truth was a paramount condition in the creation ot a strides, another leap, and so on ; or a group ot galloping horses. I Eadwcjrd Muybridge, Kingsion-on-Thjmc4. Dccciubcr 1898, pub- Suitable gearing ofan apparatus constructed for the lished in .Hiiitnj/j in Afi'li.ii. London 1 899. :

144 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

work of art. Muybridge was well aware of the signifi- cance his photographs would have in confounding the perceptual conventions of art

If it is impressed on our niinds in infancy, that a certain arbitrary symbol indicates an existing fact; if this same association of emblem and reality is reiterated at the preparatory school, insisted upon at college, and pronounced correct at the university; symbol and fact - or supposed fact - become so intimately blended that it is extremely difficult to disassociate them, even when reason and personal observation teaches us they have no true relationship. So it is with the conventional galloping horse ; we have become so accustomed to sec it in art that it has imperceptibly dominated our understanding, and we think the representation to be unimpeachable, until we throw ofFall our preconceived impressions on one side, and seek the truth by independent observation froni Nature herself.^

Muybridge's photographs were immediately seen, by the great French physiologist and medical engineer, Etienne Jules Marcy (1830-1904), as the answer to his own cumbersome and inconclusive graphic methods for re- cording objects in motion. He wrote enthusiastically about them to Gaston Tissandier, editor of the magazine, La Nature:

18 December 1878 Dear Friend,

I am impressed with Mr Muybridge's photographs published in the issue before last ofLa Naliire. Could

you put me in touch with the author? I would like his

I Eadweard Muybridge, Kingston-on-Thames, December iSy8, pub- lished in ^lumii/s in Motion, London 1899.

Eadweard Muybridge greeting a member of the Olympic Club of San Francisco. August 1879. From his 'Attitudes of Animals in Motion'. 1881.

Eadweard Muybridge: A woman throwing water. 1887. From 'Animal Locomotion'. University of Pennsylvania. 1887. ANIMAL LOCOMOTION I45

Eac.'/ea'-d Muybndge: Mr Lawtor turning a bac^ sorr,ersault -jgust 1879. From Attitudes of Animals in Motion'. 1881.

assistance in the solution ofcertain problems of physiology too difficult to resolve by other methods.

For instance, on tlie question of birds in flight, I have

devised a gun-like kind ofphotography ['fusil phowtiraphiqiie'] for seizing the bird in an attitude, or better, in a series of attitudes which impart the successive phases ofthe wing's movement. Cailletet [Louis Cailletet, a French physicist] told me he had tried something analogous in the past with encouraging

results. It would clearly be an easy experiment tor Mr Muy bridge. Then what beautiful zoetropcs he could

make. One could sec all imaginable animals during

their true movements ; it would be animated zoology.

So far as artists arc concerned, it would create a revolution tor them, since one would furnish them with true attitudes of movement; positions of the body

during unstable balances in which a model would find it impossible to pose.

As you sec, my dear friend, my enthusiasm is overflowing; please respond quickly. I'm behind you

all the way.'

cited ind aimlncd in Eadwciird Muybridgt : Tlie Stanford Years, iS-i~ 1SS2, Aniu Vcnmra Mozlcy, Robert Binlm Haas and FTajt(ouc FontcT-Hahn, Sunford University Depanmcnl ot" An, I97i, re\*ijed

i::weard Muybrldge: Woman feeding 3 dog - from 3 different ~iera angles, from 'Animal Locomotion'. 1887. jtogravure. : :

146 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

this latter class 111 1 88 1 Muybndge visited Paris where he was warmly matter. It is more especially to that we received by artists and scientists, and where he consulted dedicate our work, since it appeals to their particular with Marey. By 1882 Marey had abandoned the eadier ambition, namely, that of discovering among the methods and gone over completely to his brilliant modi- phenomena of life something that has hitherto escaped fications of Muybridgc's sequential-recording tech- the most attentive observation.' niques. These he described as chronophotography. In the preface to his best known book, Le Mouvement, published The great interest in sequential photography generated in Pans in 1894, Marey describes the predonunantly by Muybridge, and then Marey, was inevitably, it seems, scientific usefulness ofchronophotography, unaware that to lead to the perfection, or even the invention, of the in the twentieth century those strange and beautiful cinematograph. The crucial conditions were established images were to make a profound impression on the poetic not so much as an extension of Marey's chronophoto- sensitivities ofa large number ofartists graphs on fixed plates, poetically evocative though those images were, but as a result of his concern with chrono-

The graphic method, with its various developments, photography on moving plates. Marey is universally has been ofimmense service to almost every branch ot credited with being among the foremost pioneers in the science, and consequently many improvements have of invention of both the modern cine-camera and projector

late been effected. Laborious statistics have been replaced - if not the originator. The two essential ingredients in by diagrams in which the variations of a curve express the cinematic apparatus were roll tilm and a means for in a most striking manner the several phases of a interrupting momentarily, each film tramc. I reproduce patiently observed phenomenon, and, further, a here extracts trom Marey's discussion in Le Mouvemeut, recording apparatus which worked automatically can called 'Principles ot Chronophotography on Moving

trace the curve of a physical or physiological event, Plates'

which by reason of its slowness, its feebleness, or its principally rapidity, is otherwise inaccessible to observation. The weak point of the photographic gun was Sometimes, however, a curve which represents the that the images were taken on a glass plate, the weight

phases of a phenomenon is found so misleading that another and more serviceable method, namely, that ot chronophotography, has been invented. The development of these new methods ot analysing movement could never have proceeded withm the confined space of a physiological laboratory. For instance, in comparing the locomotion ot various species

of animals, it is essential that each should be studied

under natural conditions : tish in fresh water or marine

aquariums ; insects in the open air ; and man, quadrupeds, and birds in wide spaces in which their movements are unfettered. The Physiological Station, endowed by the State and the City of Paris, has afforded in this respect unique opportunities, and there, with the new appliances, the t'ollowing investigations have been tor the most part carried out. We shall see a variety of instances to what extent the older methods are applicable for the analysis ot certain phenomena, and what progress has been achieved by chronophotography.

Each chapter is nothing more than an outline, for

any attempt to fill in the details ofany section would monopolise the time and attention of a trained specialist. In a few instances such an attempt has been made, for geometricians, hydraulic engineers, naval and military men as well as artists have all had recourse to this method,

and at last naturalists have interested themselves in the ANIMAL LOCOMOTION I47

Dr E. Marey: Man smoking - J. twenty-one images on a circular plate similar to that used in the photographic gun, c. 1880

ot which was exceedingly great. The inertia of sucli a with gelatine and bromide of silver. The fihii can be mass, which continually had to be set in motion and made to pass automatically with a rectilinear movement brought to rest, necessarily limited the number of across the focus ot the lens, come to rest at each period images. The maximum was 12 in the second, and these ot exposure, and again advance witli a jerk. A scries had to be very small, or else they would have required ot photograpiis ot tair size can be taken in this way. a disc ot larger surface, and consequently of too large a The size we chose was 9 centimetres square, exactiv mass. the right size to tit the enlarging camera, and by which These difficulties may be overcome by substituting they could be magnified to convenient proportions. tor the glass disc, a continuous film very slightly coated Now, as the continuous tilni might be several metres 148 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Dr E. J. Marey. Man in a black suit with white stripe down side (left) and the chronophotographic image formed with him

walking when photographed against a black wall (above), c. 188

Dr E. J. Marey: Photographic gun. Devised for photographing birds inflight. When the trigger was pressed, a sensitised glass-plate was rapidly circulated. The inertia of such a heavy

object prevented him from taking more than twelve exposures i the time available The man smoking, a slower moving subject (page 131). has twenty-one images on the plate.

in length, the number of photographs that could be taken was practically unlimited. The necessary elements for taking successive images on a continuous tilm are united, as we have said, in the apparatus already known to the reader. The back part

ot this apparatus has a special compartment, the

photographic chamber, in which the sensitised tilm is

carried. To admit light, all that is necessary is to substitute tor the frame which carried the fixed plate another frame provided with an aperture, the size of

which can be varied at pleasure. This is the admission shutter. At each illumination the light passes through ANIMAL LOCOMOTION I49

Dr E.J. Marey: Chronophotographic plate showing phases in the movement of a flexible cane. The figure seems to be ^Aa^ey himself.

this aperture and tonus an image on the moving hhii, Marey 's 'Chronophotographic Projector' which he sees which has previously been brought into focus. mainly as an "analysing apparatus', an aid to physio- The tilni unrolls itsdt by a scries ot intermittent logical studies. A whole era ot scientific investigation into movements, by means ot a special mechanical human and animal locomotion seems to draw to a close arrangement, which enables it to pass trom one bobbin with the end of the book; a new one to begin. Marey's a scientist to another . . . last words, the matter-of-fact deliberations of A crank placed behind the chronophotographic totally preoccupied with his experiment, seem blissfully apparatus turns all the wheels of the instrument, as well unaware of the significance ot his chronophotographic as the circular diaphragms. A movement, so rapid as machines, and ot the great changes likely to come in a

this must necessarily be, is bound to be continuous, tor cinema conscious world. For him chronophotography it would be impossible, as in the case of the photographic was a means of analysing, not simulating, movement: gun, to remit or continue the movement of such heavy bodies. The film itself comes to rest at the moment ot We have therefore constructed a special apparatus, in exposure, arrested by a special mechanism which allows which an endless length (loop) of film containing torty

It to continue its movement as soon as the image has or sixty figures, or even more, is allowed to pass without field objective [the lens]. been taken . . . cessation under the of the

When the chronophotographic apparatus is pointed The illumination, which is from behind, and consists at the object the movements ot which are to be studied, either of the electric light or the sun itself, projects the wheels arc put in motion by turning a crank, the these figures upon a screen. This instrument produces

different parts acquire a uniform speed, but tlie tilm very bright images, but it is noisy, and the projected remains stationary until the moment when the observed figures do not appear as absolutely motionless' as one phenomenon takes place. At this juncture the operator could wish. presses the trigger, the film begins to move, and the Having arrived at this point in our researches, we

photographs arc taken as long as the pressure is maintained learned that our mechanic had discovered an immediate quite a different on the trigger ; as soon as the pressure is remitted the solution of this problem, and by

progress of the film is arrested. The employment of this method ; wc shall therefore desist from our present

trigger makes it possible to continue taking photographs account pending further investigations.

until the bobbin is exhausted.

Marey finishes his book with a chapter entitled 'Synthetic Reconstruction of the Elements of an Analysed Move- ment'. The text amounts to a summary description ot a few pre-cinematic techniques, precursors ot his own in- ventions. The chapter ends with a briet description ot the iVjincs flR-ker. hci m^ ' w II ^St^iA,iiJm 1

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DR E. |, MAREY: AERODYNAMIC STUDIES USING SMOKE FILAMENTS

CAMERA WORK

"My own camera is of the simplest pattern and has never left me in the lurch, although it has had some very tough handling in wind and storm. ..a shutter working at a speed of one-fourth to one-twenty-fifth of a second will answer all purposes. Microscopic sharpness is of no pictorial value.' Alfred Stiegiitz (1897) ' fSANK' EllGENE : GROUP (LEFT TO RIGHT) WITH HIMSELF. ALFRED STIEGLITZ, HEiNRICH KOhn AND EDWARD STEICHEN fRANCIS PICA8IA: PORTRi

CAMERA WORK

As in the other towards the end of tlie century, a great stirring was felt in photography too. For the first time since its inception photographers banded together, not with the complaisance of clubs or photographic societies, but in tlic spirit of protest with its accompanying sense of outrage and ritual de- nouncement of all photograpliy which merely tailed after painting. The 'Linked

Ring', founded in 1893, engendered 'Photo-Secession', which formed in 1902. The names themselves of these embattled cadres are testimonies of aesthetic camera- - ' .

I60 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

defies forged under the banner of artistic progress. As The growth ot artistic photography in the United States

with Post-Impressionist painting, tliis union was based has corresponded in point ot time with a remarkable

not on styhstic similarities but on an opposition to all development ot American painting, and in no slight

earlier conventions. Furthermore, these movements were measure has been influenced by it . . . international and thus, as in the other arts, imparted that In the early days ot the glycerine and gum-bichromate necessary confirmation ot importance so useful insustani- processes, one or two [photographers] were temporarily ing rebellious convictions. infatuated by the ease with which they could reproduce Studio magazine (London), an extremely important the effects ot other mediums; but a spirit at once more journal concerned with design and the visual arts, and scientific and more artistic has prevailed ; and to-day intelligently edited by Charles Holme, published a those photographers who have gone furthest in the sumptuously illustrated special number in the summer of pictorial direction are the mostjealous supporters of the

1905 called /In ill Photogrcipliy. The following are excerpts integrity and independence of their craft.

from its texts: Less hampered by convention than their confreres on

Without the natural gift ot artistic expression, all the the other side of the Channel, much of the best work art knowledge in the world will, in nine cases out often, of the French masters in the art of photography has

when applied to photography prove futile . . . shown a variety and daring of subject debarred to even Innovators have always been terrible to the man in the leaders of the English school save as exercises for

the street. But in art, as in other walks of life, f requentl y their own personal gratification. In no particular has

it is not possible to attain a hearing or attract attention the difierence of, shall we say convention? been more to even serious developments without some beating of apparent than in the treatment of sacred subjects, and drums. Another point. Extremists who have let their that ot the nude. discoveries in pictorial work run wild, have, nevertheless, often served a useful purpose by challenging antipathetic Writing in the same publication on pictorial photography and severe criticism. Art lives and advances by in and German)', the -well-known photographer

criticism of the right sort, and much that is valuable in A. Horsley Hinton establishes the tact that it was in present-day methods of photography has resuhed from Vienna, about 1891, that the first major step was taken in

what has at first been too noisy a revolt from the the subsequent appearance of secessionist movements in

is facility conventions . . . photography. Hinton, too, suspicious of the

It is now, indeed, possible to tell a photograph by with which new, manipulative, photographic techniques almost any leading and well-known worker at a glance, can be made to effect the appearance of a genuine work

to distinguish the style as easily as to tell a Sargent, a of art but which is essentially superficial. But it is not the Brangwyn, a Wilson Steer, an Orchardson, a Le Sidancr fault ot the medium he insists: or an Emile Claus. This fact not only lends dignity to the works themselves, but also forms the strongest In England, as in Germany, and in other countries there

possible argument that Photography, like all arts, is are some artists and innumerable dilettanti who occupy pictorial photography, but it should evolutionary, and in a word - is an art . . . The themselves with limitations of photography as regards the rendering ot be the aim of all, for the sake of photography, to

colour, and the fact that the elimination of the separate art photography from amateur photography . . print, superfluous is not easy of accomplishment, prevent it, In the presence of a where one at all events at present, being considered on the same there is abundant evidence of brush development,

plane as painting, or gaining its chiefsuccesses in a often hears it asked, 'Why did not this man paint his similar way or by identical methods. In the case ot both picture at first-hand?' The answer is quite simple. a landscape and portraiture it has been found over and 'Because he could not'. There are men who possess over again that to succumb to the ruse of excessive fine artistic perception and knowledge but entirely

diffusion of focus and flat low tones in the hope that the lack the manipulative skill with cither pencil or brush. resultant photograph may be considered to have been Photography relieves them of the necessity of acquiring evolved by the same methods as a modern painting by the latter, and in such a process as that now referred to a member of the 'impressionist' school, is but to court furnishes a medium of personal expression. ridicule by artists, and invite the stigma of failure at the

1 Charles H. Caffin, 'The Development of Pliotography in the United hands of the less educated.' States', op. cit.

2 CUve Holland, 'Sonic Notes upon the Pictorial School and its

I Clive Holbnd. 'Artistic Pliotngraphy in Great IJnt.un'. op. cit. Leaders m France,' op. cit. : ;

CAMERA WORK l6l

Hinton then supplies us with a lucid description ot the graphy was bound to have its effect. There were, to be much vaunted and much abused gum bichromate process sure, other more obscure, but no less important, social which IS well worth reproducing here: and aesthetic reasons which helped to promote such a great disdain for the mechanically executed work of art In connection with this mention ot the Gum Bichromate and the concomitant apotheosis of human intervention. process, one may perhaps make briet reference to the And with an unparalleled contempt for the trivial, in art not uncommon erroneous notion that the Gum as well as in life, the idea of an aesthetic elite producing an Bichromate workerstrives to imitate the effects produced exalted art inevitably grew. in painting, and that being hand-work it is not And yet the same_photographic technology which legitimate photography - an error arising chiefly from made it possible for the ordinary man to take up the

Ignorance of how the print is produced. Paper is coated camera, created the conditions which gave pictorialists with a mucilage of gum arable and the desired pigment, the means to manipulate the image. Here is an extract and IS made light-sensitive by the addition of potassium from an essay by Robert Demachy, one of the leading bichromate, this sensitiveness being shown by the theorists and practitioners of artistic photography in the pigment and gum becoming more or less insoluble in period. Demachy indignantly and relentlessly echoes the proportion as the light has access to it. The paper thus declamations of painters and sculptors. And the perpetra- prepared is exposed to daylight under a photographic tors of the commonplace in reportage and documentary negative which, being opaque or partly so in those photography, like the descriptive painters of narrative places which should be light in the ultimate picture and subjects, are pejoratively excommunicated as 'straight' relatively transparent where the picture's shadows photographers will be, respectively intercepts and permits the action c^f the light. No image is visible as the direct result of On the Straight Print printing, but the exposed preparation is submitted to the The old war between and the action of water and the film or plaster lightly worked other one - call it as you like - has begun over again- upon with brush or sponge or jet of water, so as to It is not, as it ought to be, a question of principle. No, disengage and remove such portions which, having It has become a personal question amongst a good many been shielded from the light, are still soluble. But the photographers, because most of them, and especially parts rendered insoluble are not entirely so, and should those who take purely documentary photographs, look the photographer desire this or that tone somewhat to being recognised as artists. It follows that any with their lighter than the photographic negative has made it, the definition of art that does not fit in methods recognition of brush or whatever implement is employed can be used will be violendy attacked because the pictorial photography to tease the pigment away from its support in what such a definition would limit manner and to such degree as his judgment may direct. to a certain number of men instead ot throwing open Thus we may have brush marks not because the the doors of the temple to the vast horde of camera that a work of photographer has tried to imitate the brush marks of a carriers . . . for though I believe tirmh'

circumstances, 1 painting, but because if they help him to realise his art can be evolved under certain am these same circum.stances will effect they are a legitimate part of his process.' equally convinced that not perforce engender a work of art. Meddling widi a The sixty-year-old polemic about photography's status as gum print may or may not add the vital spark, though spark an art had now, around the turn of the century, reached without the meddling there will surely be no beautiful, it a shrill pitch. And we may well suppose that the coin- whatever ... A straight print may be and cidence of this aesthetic fervour among photographers may prove superabimdantly that its author is an artist

with the equally vehement declarations of painters and but it cannot be a work of art . . . Now, speaking of sculptors proclaiming the virtues of art over nature, of graphic methods only, what arc the distinctive qualities art a transcription, art above beauty even, of art for art's sake, was more of a work of art? A work of must be than merely fortuitous. This radicalism in the photo- not a copy, of nature. The beauty of the motive in ith the quality that makes a graphic arts hardly masks an uneasiness about the avail- nature has nothing to do w quality is the artist's ability by that time of the photographic medium to the work of art. This special given by words, there is not a populace at large. Then, too, the phenomenal growth way of expressing himself. In other the beautiful scene ot nature. The ofcinematography and its obvious relation to still photo- particle of art in most

art is man's alone, it is subjective not objective. If a man

slavislily copies nature, no matter it it is with hand and pencil or through a photographic lens, he may be a . ; .

PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

satisfaction supreme artist all the while, but that particular work ot about their genesis, and found to my intimate his cannot be called a work of art. that they w'ere not straight prints at all. I have seen

' multi-moditied prints that were I have so often heard the terms 'artistic' and beautiful' brush-developed, gum - - employed as if they were synonymous that I believe worse immeasurably worse than the vilest tintype have in possession it is necessary to insist on the radical difference between in existence, and I have seen and my Salomon, their meanings. Quite lately I have read in the course straight prints by Miss Cameron and by one of an interesting article on American pictorial of our first professionals, just after Daguerre's time, photography the following paragraph: "In nature there that are undoubtedly the work of artists . . . The

is for there is no middle IS the beautiful, the commonplace and the ugly, and conclusion simple enough, he who has the insight to recognise the one from the course between the mechanical copy ofnature and the other and the cunning ro separate and transfix only the personal transcription of nature. The law is there; but

is to it, the button-pressers will beautiful, is the artist.' This would induce us to believe there no sanction and and to that when Rembrandt painted the 'Lesson in Anatomy' continue to extol the purity of their intentions correct and modify he proved himself no artist. Is there anything uglier make a virtue of their incapacity to pictorialists will in nature than a greenish, half-disemboweled corpse their mechanical copies. And too many or anything more commonplace than a score of men meddle with their prints in the tond belief that any

of art . . dressed in black standing round a table? Nevertheless, alteration, however bungling, is the touchstone confess astonishment the result of this combination of the ugly and the Before ending I camiot but my such a profession ot faith as the one I commonplace is one of the greatest masterpieces in at the necessity of making. Pictorial photography owes its painting. Because the artist intervened . . have been Let us change the circumstances and take as an birth to the universal dissatisfaction ot artist errors ot example a beautiful motive such as a sunset. Do you photographers in front of the photographic its lack accents. think that Turner's sunsets existed in nature such as he the straight print. Its false values, of painted them? Do you think that if he had painted them Its equal delineation of things important and useless, recognised and deplored by a host ot as they were, and not as he felt them, he would have were universally There was a general cry towards liberty left a name asanartist? malcontents. liberty of correction. Glycerine- Not once but many times have I heard it said that of treatment and platinotype and gum bichromate were soon the choice of the motive is sufficient to turn an otherwise developed oil mechanically produced positive into a work of art. after hailed w-ith enthusiasm as liberators ; today the chosen process opens outer and irmer doors to personal treatment. This IS not true ; what is true is that a carctully against old-fashioned and motive (beautiful, ugly or commonplace, but well And yet, after all this outcry methods, after this thankful acceptance composed and properly lighted) is necessary in the narrow-minded fought for new ideas are subsequent evolution towards art. It is not the same of new ones, the men who errors. That documentary thing. No, you cannot escape the consequences ot the now fighting for old print as a mere copying of nature. A copyist may be an artist but photographers should hold up the straight in it is, model is but natural, they will continue doing so his copy IS not a w-ork of art ; the more accurate (ttemtiiii for various personal reasons; but that men like the worse art it will be. Please do not unearth the old virtues of mechamcal story about Zeuxis and Apelles, when the bird and then A and B should extol the as an art process, I caimot understand.' the painter were taken in. I have no faith in sparrows photography

as art critics and I think the mistake of the painter was was no doubt referring to Alfred Stieghtz and an insult to his brother artist. Demachy in York. Stieghtz had published, from The result of all this argument will be that I shall be his follow-ers New hard-hitting Camera Xoles, and he taxed with having said that all unmodified prints are 1897 to 1902, the retrospect that it was "a battlefield as well as a detestable productions, fit for the wastepaper basket, writes in intercontinental and that before locally developed platinotype, gum bugle call'. He recalls with glee the hostilities at the beginning bichromate, ozotype and oils, there were no artists to dimensions of photographic century, when he w^as instrumental in establishing be foimd amongst photographers. I deny all this. I have of the with its head- seen many straight prints that were beautiful and that the American version of Photo-Secession, gallery '291', and at gave evidence of the artistic nature ot their authors, quarters in the famous New York exceedingly important without being, in my private opinion, works ot art. the same time publishing the

For a work of art is a big thing. I have also seen so-called straight prints that struck me as works of art, so much 1 Robert Dciiuchy, 'On the Straiglit Print', Camera Wmk, No. 18-iy, so that I immediately asked for some technical details : .

CAMERA WORK I63

magazine, Camera Work, which ran from 1903 to 19 17. The fountainhead of secessionist movements in photo- Inevitably, the divisions among pictorialists reflect a graphy at the begirming of this century was no doubt similar fragmentation in the other arts, and it seems quite Stieglitz's "Litde Galleries of the Photo-Secession', later in order that the fiery and bellicose Stieglitz should now called '291', its address in Fifth Avenue, New York. hold out for an uncompromising and straightforward Inaugurated in 1905, not only were photographs from photography in which the intrinsic features of its imagery international contributors showji there, but the 'Litde would provide a sufficiently versatile vocabulary of form Galleries' held some of the most important exhibitions in to supersede the manufactured niceties ofself-consciously the early history of modern art in the twentieth century. creative photographers. The indomitable Stieglitz con- Matisse had his first exhibition in the US there. The sequently took an unheard of step in going over to the galleries introduced Rodin to an American pubUc ordinary, hand-held camera in the 1890s. That was not through his drawings. Manet and other Impressionists merely a testimony to his daring, but an expression ot were given shows; Cczarme and Toulouse-Lautrec also. taith in the medium and in his own abilities as an artist. Picasso and Braque, Brancusi, Gino Severini, and the Stieglitz understood well that with such an instrument modern primitive Henri Rousseau contributed to the

the profound workings of the creative mind may be exhibitions of the Photo-Secessiomsts between 191 1 and instantaneously obeyed. Spontaneity was too valuable a 1914. All the secessionists at the time in American art

gift to fritter away on complicated contraptions and were represented there: John Marin, Marsden Hartley, ponderous methods Georgia O'KecfFe, Stanton Macdonald-Wright among them. And the photographers belonging to the group

Each worker will have liis own idea as to which style of included Al vin Langdon Cobum, Frank Eugene, Clarence camera comes nearest to perfection in this respect, and White and, of course, Stieglitz and Eduard Steichen. having made his choice he should study to become so To a considerable extent twentieth-century America

intimate with it that it will become a second nature with w-as introduced to the photographic might of Hill and his hands to prepare the camera while his mind and Adamson when, in 1906 their works appeared in the exhibition British eyes are fully occupied with the subject before him . . Secession galleries in an of photo-

The w'riter does not approve ofcomplicated mechanisms, graphers which included Frederick Evans and J. Craig as they are sure to get out ot order at important Arman. And Hill and Adamson were not without influ- moments, thus causing considerable unnecessary ence on the appreciative American photographers. The swearing, and often the loss of a precious opportunity. whole list reads like a roll-call of the 'Greats' in modem e.xhibirions My own camera is of the simplest pattern and has never art. The Little Galleries also pioneered of

left me in the lurch, although it has had some very Negro sculpture, Japanese prints and even works by tough handling in wind and storm ... a shutter working children. All this in those small and modest rooms at 291 at a speed of one-fourth to onc-twenty-fifth of a second Fifth Avenue. Camera Work provides us with a literally

will answer all purposes. Microscopic sharpness is of colourful description of the gallery:

no pictorial value. A little blur m a moving subject

is in dull olive tones, will often aid in giving the impression of action and . . . One of the larger rooms kept

motion ... In order to obtain pictures by means of the the burlap wall-covering being a warm olive gray ; the in , hand camera it is well to choose your subject, regardless woodwork and moldings similar general but of figures, and carefully study the lines and lighting. considerably darker. The hangings are of an olive-sepia After having determined upon these watch the passing sateen, and the ceiling and canopy arc of a very deep

figures and await the moment in which everything is in creamy gray. The small room is designed especially to very light mounts or in white frames. balance ; that is, satisfies your eye. This often means show prints on hours of patient waiting. My picture, 'Fifth Avenue, The walls of this room are covered with a bleached

; arc pure Winter,' is the result of a three hours' stand during a natural burlap the woodwork and molding

fierce snow-storm on February 22nd, 1893, awaiting white ; the hangings, a dull ecru. The third rooni is the proper moment. My patience was duly rewarded. decorated in gray-blue, dull salmon, and olive-gray. wall- Of course, the result contained an element of chance, In all the rooms the lampshades match the

as I might have stood there for hours without succeeding coverings.' in getting the desired picture.' George Bernard Shaw was an ebullient photographic enthusiast. His own photographs were nothing special, - its Present Import- I Extracted from Stieglitz. 'The Hand Camera ance', The AmerUmi Annual oj Plwlosmphy. 1 8y7. Reprinted in Plwh>- 1 cit.. No. 14, April 1906. graphers on Plwtos'upliy, ed. Nathan Lyons, Prentice-Hall, i

1 64 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

and his lotty utterances about photography and the make us swallow huge blotches ot shadow which were death of art made up in bombast what they lacked in per- not merely under-exposed but actually not effectively

ception. Nevertheless, Shaw was very important in gal- photographed at all. Coburn, though even he cannot vanising the photo-pictorialists of the time, confirming get the whole scale of natural light out of his plates (or in them a greater sense of their own importance. In a rather his Christoid films) any more than Turner could

letter to , sent from the Hotel get it out of his paints, nevertheless never exhibits a

Palais d'Orsay in Pans on 17 April 1906, Shaw wrote: print that does not owe much of its value to great skill

m developing and printing, or that is not an artistic Come along any time you like. photograph sui generis, and not an imitation of Corot

Rodin, seeing that I had a camera, invited me to landscape, or a charcoal drawing. I consider that the

photograph his place if I liked. I took the opportunity only living photographer within London ken who has

to press your claims, and he said certainly. I guaranteed kept pace with him technically is Baron de Meyer. When you a good workman. The sculpting sittings are at his work and de Meyer's appeared in London with a Meudon 25 minutes train from Paris, where he has a miscellaneous collection of the masterpieces of the lot of beautiful things. No photograph yet taken has Stieglitz boom, these latter were visibly beaten hollow

touched him. Stcichen was right to give him up and some which delighted us all a few years ago, now

silhouette him. He is by a million chalks the biggest man proclaimed themselves simply as Straight Prints from

you ever saw ; all your other sitters are only fit to make Spoiled Negatives. In Short, Coburn is a good workman, to emulsify for his negative. and whenever his work docs not please you, watch and G.B.S.i pray for a while and you will find that your opinion will change. And to Archibald Henderson, from Hafod Llanbedr, Haven't seen any of Stcichen's results except the color

29 July 1907; plate which you saw . . . G.B.S. My dear Henderson, You must restrain your enthusiasm for photogravure,

unless you propose to issue a Bernard Shaw album at S25. Each photogravure has to be separately printed on separate paper at a cost ofabout two-pence. The three

in Three Plays for Puritans knock about sixpence a copy ofFthe profits, and probably don't increase the

sales a bit.

I am glad you like Coburn. He is a specially white youth, and, on the whole, the best photographer in the

world. He is quite right in saying that he could do no better with the Rodin than he has already done. You see, that was what he meant to do, and if you don't

like it (says Master Alvin) there is always the trade

photographer to fall back on. He is quite an eligible subject tor an article. He has carried photography clean beyond the Kasebier-Stieglitz boom. The best workman

that movement produced was, perhaps, Dcmachy ; but Dcmachy does not aim at making an art of photography, but at producing the effects of the painters - notably the Barbizon School and the Impressionists - by photographic methods and artistic manipulation of the

print. Mrs Kasebier's work is most charming, her lucky negatives are first rate, but though she knew what to

try for, and valued it when she got it, she had to make merits ofglaring deficiencies in the photographic process, and use her power ofappeal to the imagination to

! George Bernard Shuw. Colkclcti Leilers i8y8-iyio. Ed. Darnel H. Laurence. M.ix Rcinhardt iy72. SMALL GIRL ilG ANNAN; ELLEN TERR ROBfcRT DEMACh

- 5 ALVIN LANGDON COBURN LUOGATE CIBCUS WITH ST PAULS 96 ALFRED STIEGLITZ: PARIS >7 ALFRED STIEGLITZ: WINTER. NEW YORK. 1892

COLOUR NOTES

"Steichen arrived breathlessly at my hotel to show me his first two pictures. Although comparative failures, they convinced me at a glance that the color problem for practical work had been solved, and that even the most fastidi- ous must be satisfied. Alfred Stieglitz (1907)

I

Alfred Stieglitz was rapturous over the arrival of a practicable natural-colour photographic process after more than half a century of inconclusive experi- ment. In an enthusiastic letter to the editor of Photography (London), reprinted in Camera Work, he describes those thrilling days in Paris when he and Eduard inter- Steichen first saw evidence of the new miracle. His letter is particularly unquestionable bril- esting as it demonstrates the optimism of a photographer of tech- liance who sees in the ease of execution and chromatic truthfulness ot the new : :

176 PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

nology not a threat to his profession but a means for yet Steichen did Shaw and Lady Hamilton in color; also a greater triumphs in the art ofphotography group of touron Davison's houseboat. The pictures arc artistically far in advance ofanything he had to show you.

Sir, - Your enthusiasm about the Lumicre Autochrome The possibilities of the process seem to be unlimited.

plates and the results to be obtained with them is well Steichen's pictures are with me here in ; he

founded. I have read every word Photoi;iraphy has liimself is now in Venice working. It is a positive pleasure

pubhshed on the subject. Nothing you have written is to watch the faces of the doubting Thomases - the an exaggeration. No matter what you or anyone else painters and art critics especially' - as they listen may write on the subject and in praise ofthe results, the interestedly about what the process can do. You feel pictures themselves are so startlingly true that they their cjTiical smile. Then, showing them the surpass anyone's keenest expectations. transparencies, one and all faces look positively

I fear that those of your contemporaries w ho are paralysed, sturmed. A color kinematographic record decrying and belittling what they have not seen, and of them would be priceless in many respects. Then seem to know nothing about, will in the near future, enthusiasm, delighted, unbound, breaks loose, like have to do some crawling. For upwards of twenty years yours and mine and everyone's who sees decent results.

I have been closely identified with . All are amazed at the remarkably truthful color

I paid much good coin before I came to the conclusion rendering ; the wonderful luminosity ot the shadows,

that color, so far as practical purposes were concerned, that bugbear of the photographer in monochrome ; the

would ever remain the perpetual motion problem of endless range ot grays ; the ricliness of the deep . photography. In short, soon the world will be color-mad, and

Over eighteen months ago I was informed from inside Lumiere will be responsible.

sources that Luiiiiere's [sic] had actually solved the It is perhaps fortunate that temporarily the plates are difference between the results problem ; that in a short time everyone could make out of the market. The

color pictures as readily as he could snap films. I smiled that w ill be obtained between the artistic fine feeling incredulously, although the name Lumiere gave that and the everyday blind w ill even be greater in color smile an awkwardness, Lumiere and success and science than in monochrome. Heaven have pity on us. But the thus far always having been intimately' identified. good will eventually outw'eigh the evil, as in all things.

Good fortune willed it that early this June I was in Pans I for one have learned above all that no problem seems

when the first results were to be shown at the to be beyond the reach of science.

Photo-Club. Steichen and I were to go there together. Yours truly, Alfred Stieglitz

Steichen went; illness kept me at home. Anxiously I Tutzing, Munich, Jvily 31st, 1907 awaited Steichen's report. His 'pretty good only'

satisfied my vanity of knowing it all. In the following year Steichen, in Paris, wrote a long and Steichen nevertheless bought some plates that thoroughgoing article drawing out the technical distinc-

morning, as he w-ishcd to see what results he could tions between the Lumiere Autochrome process and

obtain. Don't we all know^ that in photography the several others, both earlier and contemporary. Interest- con- manufacturer rarely gets all there is in his own ingly, Steichen fmds, in what might have been invention? Steichen arrived breathlessly at my hotel to sidered an imperfection in the irregularity of the granu-

show me his first two pictures. Although comparative lation on the Lumiere plate, a photographic means failures, they convinced me at a glance that the color equivalent to Impressionist painting tcclmique, by' which problem for practical work had been solved, and that a sense of shimmering luminous particles of colour could even the most fastidious must be satisfied. These be conveyed. He even states a preference tor a plate with experiments were hastily followed up by others, and in a yet coarser emulsion so that the chromatic nuances

less than a week Steichen had a series of pictures which would become more easily visible. in April outdid anytliing that Lumiere had had to show-. I Tliis article appeared in Camera Work 1909. illustrations: colour wrote to you about that time, and told you what I had That number carried only three original seen and thought, and you remember v. hat you replied. prints of Lumiere Autochromes made trom the article His trip to London, his looking you up and show ing transparencies by Steichen. A small section of

you his work, how it took you literally off your feet, is reproduced here how a glance (like with myself) was sufficient to show you that the day had come, your enthusiasm, your own Color PhotOi^rapliY the last twenty years we have been periodically experiments, f tc, etc. - all that is history, and is for the During was most part recorded in your weekly. While in London informed by the daily press that color photography :

COLOUR NOTES 177

to an accomplished fact. Every time some excitable regularity, can give. I am, however, very anxious it should, individual got a little chemical discoloration on his try some plate that has a coarser screen, for or paper, the news was sent sizzling apparently, be more luminous in color rendering. . . . over the globe and color photography was announced in As regards the printing of Autochromes, the big type, corporations were formed, and good friends three-color process affords no end of possibilines, such were given another chance to invest in a sure thing. as Gum. Carbon and Pinatype. But other simpler solutions ot As usual, the public soon yawned at this perpetual cry processes are under way, and the practical more of 'wolf, but somehow capital kept up its faith. It the problem are nearer at hand. I shall leave any another was only a year ago that a very prominent French definite reference to the printing process for financier came to me, breathless with excitement over a article, when my own experiments have been more few very good three-color carbon prints - a clever complete. But one tiling we must not lose sight of: it is English shark was trying to interest capital in his futile ever to expect any process on paper, or other 'discovery'. Millions have surely been buried in take substance that presents the picture by reflected light, transparency, schemes, to say nothing of the millions spent in earnest, to give an exact reproduction of a color represent the but commercially fruitless, research. any more than a painting on canvas can When the Lumicre brothers published the description effects of a painting on glass. In this way the screen plate that arc not to be of their process, several years ago, it was naturally duly will always possess value and beauty - exist on paper. recorded by the photographic press, and it even got into copied and color that caimot Furthermore and ofparticular interest pictorially is this some of the big dailies - at least as padding ; but those beautiful as a ot us that were puttering along with the various tact : that what may appear very three-color methods watched for results with much transparency, may w hen transferred to paper be richness purity of color interest, especially when we heard that a special plant absolutely horrible, for the and was being put up to manufacture the plates. From time produced by transmitted light admits of color impossible, if attempted in to time one heard rumors of a man that had seen one arrangements that would be reflected light would make of them. of the results, and the report was- 'true coloring, green the dull tones that are color harmonics w hich can only be indulged grass, red tie,' and so on. The first specimens the There or stained glass makers showed us would have been as discouraging in when colors as luminous as in enamel - are possible on as such rumors had been, did one not remember the are available such combinations plates. Tliis is one of the direct facts that results that makers of plates and papers generally exhibit Autochrome so point to color harmony as the vital element to strive as 'samples' ; but the working process seemed

1 have medium that fascinatingly simple that the very next day I tried them tor in Autochromy. Personally no wonderful luminosity as the myself, and the first results brought the conviction can give me color ofsuch to stained gbss for that color photography had come to stay. Autochrome plate. One must go resonance, as the palette and canvas are a Ofcourse the Autochrome process is not a discovery such color in comparison. As I write in the science of color photography, for the principles dull and lifeless medium prints of the color plates from the edition of the process were described by Ducos du I lauron, in these notes the fundamental of those appearing with these pages in Camera Work, 1 868 ; in fact the development of originals have not yet arrived, so 1 theories of three-color photography are ascribed to are before me. The

have been can not compare. The engravings are remarkable ; they Maxwell, as far back as 1 86i . Other inventors screen-processes - are technically by far the best reproductions tliat have and are still working on polychrome Autochromes up to the present; but amongst the better-known arejoly, MacDonough, been made from Powrie-Warner, Krayn, Brasseur, Mees, and Smith. their relationship to the originals, as regards color, vitality, and harmony, as I remember tiicm, is as - well, The Socicte Jougla, in Paris, is soon to market a

fails completely ! There is no relationship. polychrome plate, made under the supervision and comparison thing apart. To-day, in making plates .according to the patents of Ducos du Hauron and They are a other plates will intended for prints in any form, one will consider die Raymond Bergecol ; and a number of accordingly - so the accompanying probably soon be available, which promise to do even final result, and work pictures into Camera Wt)RK merely as an better than the Lumicre plates - but that remains to be color go will. They arc neither representative demonstrated. In any case, from a pictorial standpoint, expression of good photography, nor of color photography the Lumiere plate for the present holds a unique field. of Autochrome beautiful, they are a compromise - an experiment. The fine, irregular grain of this plate gives a Paris, EduardJ. Steichcn vibrant quality to the light, that I do not think any of 1908 the mosaic or line screen-plates, with their absolute LOUIS LUMIERE HIS FATHER ANTOINE

LFRED STIEGLITZ FRANK EUGENE 10 7 ALFRED STIEGLITZ HIS MOTHE

10 9 J C WARBURG PFGGY WARB-5C- •ORGt BERNARD SHAW Bf ATHiCE WEBB : 1 ;

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 2.5 Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah John Hawes: Daniel Webster, American statesman and orator, c. 1850. Southworth and Hawcs had a studio in Boston, Massachusetts; theirs were some ot the best American daguerreotypes. (Metropolitan

Chapter i Museum of Art, New York) OPENING PAGE Hciiry Fox Talbot; The Reading photographic 2.6. Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah John Hawes: Chief

cstabhshment, 1844. Talbot is in the centre with a camera; his Justice Lemuel Shaw of Massachusetts, c. 1850. Daguerreotype chief assistant, Nicholas Henncman, who ran the establishment (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) appears twice, photographing far left and centre right. Montage 2.7. Carl Ferdinand Stelzner: Daniel Runge and his wife of two calotypes. (Science Museum) Wilhclmina c. 1845, W. A. Kriiss and E.J. Krliss, Hamburg 1.1 Henry Fox Talbot: Nelson's Column being constructed. students, and The Outing of the Hamburg Sketch Club. 1843". The column was finished November 1843. Calotype (Science Daguerreotype (Staatliche Landesbildstellc Hamburg) Museum) 2.8 Unknown photographer: The Butterfly collector, c. 1850. 1.2 Henry Fox Talbot: hiterior, Lacock Abbey, April 1S43. Daguerreotype (International Museum of Photography, Calotype (Science Museum) House)

1.3 Henry Fox Talbot: The courtyard, Lacock Abbey, c. 1843. 2-9 Unknown photographer: Nude. c. 1S50. Haifa stereo- Calotype (Science Museum) daguerreotype (International Museum of Photography, 1.4 Henry Fox Talbot: The Ladder. This calotype appeared in George Eastman House) The Pencil ofWimrv 1844. (Science Museum) 2.10 Hubert (Assistant to Daguerrc): Classical still life, c. 1839.

1.5 Henry Fox Talbot: Mrs Talbot and their three daughters, Daguerreotype (Societe Fran^aise dc Photographic) 19 April 1X42. Caiotype (Science Museum) 2.11 Dr Alexander John Elhs: Venice daguerreotype no. Vs. ].(i Henry Fox Talbot: A gamekeeper, c. 1S44. Calotype *Dogana del Marc & Church of Maria della Salute at the En- probably taken with the supplied to Talbot by trance of the Grand Canal from Riva Schiavone near the Pane Ross tor use on 'Sun Pictures in Scotland'. (Science Museum) di Paglia. 8.29-8.36 am i6th July 1841.' (EUis's own caption). 1.7 Henry Fox Talbot: Bricklayers, c. 1844. Possibly taken in Daguerreotype (Science Museum) the London studio of Claudet (See 1.8). Calotype (Science 2.12 G. N. Barnard: Burning Mills at Oswego, New York, Museum) 1853. Barnard later became one of the best w^et collodion i.S Henry Fox Talbot: Bohemian Party, c. 1S44. Man m centre photographers of the Civil War, making a particularly fme

is probably the photographer, Antome Claudet, who held a record of the devastation of the South. Daguerreotypes professional calotype licence from Talbot and was also a well- (International Museum of Photography, George Eastman known daguerreotype photographer. Possibly taken in his House) studio. Calotype (Science Museum) Other illustrations in this chapter are from Conservatoire Na-

Other illustrations 111 this chapter are from The Royal Photo- rionalc des Arts et Metiers (36 bottom), Japan Society of San

graphic Society (18, 20 top left). The Royal Scottish Museum Francisco (32 right). Science Museum (34), Societe Franijaise

(15). Science Museum (19, 20 top right and bottom, 21) de Photographic (36 top)

Chapter 2 Chapter j OPENING PAGE Charles Fontayne and W. S. Porter: Panorama OPENING PAGE Dr John Adamson and Robert Adamson: Pages of eight daguerreotypes of the Cincimiati waterfront, 1849. from an album of calotypes taken m St Andrews, Fife, and sent (Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library) to Fox Talbot in November 1S42, 'in testimony of the great i.\ Joseph Nicephore Niepce: Still-life on glass ?c. 1830, now pleasure we have derived from your discovery' destroyed (from a copy made in 1891). Possibly made after his Inside front cover: Sir David Brewster who had taught the partnership with Daguerrc. Destroyed by scientist who unfor- Adamsons the Calotype method and introduced them tunately had a brain-storm and smashed everything in his to Talbot.

laboratory while he was examining it. (Societe Fran^aise de The Chapel of St Salvator's College. St Andrews Photographic) The daughters of Dr Thomson at St Andrews 2.2 L.J. M. Daguerrc: Boulevard du Temple c. 1839. Daguer- The Adamsons' home, Burnside Farm near St Andrews reotype sent to the King of Bavaria and destroyed by bombing Farm scene, presumably at Bumsidc.

1940-45. Due to the long exposure all moving objects have The Calotypes arc small, approximately 4 inches wide.

: - disappeared except a man who had stopped to have his shoes 3 . Hippolyte Bayard 'Perspective' colonnade of the Church cleaned. (Baycrisches Nationalmuseum) of La Madeleine, Paris, c. 1845. (Societe Francaise dc Photo-

2.3 Drjohn Draper : his sister, Dorothy Draper, 1 840. Exposure graphic) 'about 6 minutes'. Dr Draper of New York was one of the 3.2 Hippolyte Bayard: 'La Petite Boudcuse' - Little Sulky,

earliest people to make a daguerreotype portrait. Two versions c. 1 845 . (Societe Franc^aise de Photographic) Hippolyte Bayard: 'L'Etalage dc I'Epicier' - The grocer's of this portrait exist. One he sent to Sir J. F. W. Herschel in }.} England was damaged by cleaning and is usually reproduced shop-window, August 1843. (Societe Francaise dc Photo- from an artotypc reproduction. The version here was recently graphic) acquired from the Draper family. (I^ivision of Photographic 3.4 D. O. Hill and Robert Adamson: Piper and Drummer of History, Smithsonian Institution) the 92nd Highlanders in Review Order, Edinburgh Castle. 2.4 Henry Fitz jnr: Susan Fitz. Fitz was a Baltimore photo- 9 April 1846. Calotype (Scottish National Portrait Gallery) grapher who claimed he made a daguerreotype self-portrait as 3.5 D. O. Hill and Robert Adamson: Fishergirls, Ncwhavcn, early as December 1839. (Division of Photographic History, June 1845. Calotype (National Portrait Gallery, London) Smithsonian Institution) 3.6 D. O. Hill and Robert Adamson: Masons at the Scott LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1 87

- Monument, Edniburgli, c, 1S44. Collotype (Scottish National 5.4 Sanuicl Bourne: 'View at the top of the Manirung T'ass' Portrait Gallery) elevation i.S,6oo ft - late Augiisf early September 1866. One 3.7 D. O. Hill and Robert Adanison: Durham Cathedral. of three exposures taken in freezing conditions and at the high- c. 1844. The Whatman paper watermark was retouched by est altitude for any wet-pbte photograph known. (Private pencil. A modern print from the original negative. Calotype collection. London)

(Glasgow University Library) <,.<, Bourne and Shepherd : The Reversing Station. Uhon Ghat. 3.S D. O. Hill and Robert Adamson: Robert Caddcll, Graham Bourne found this wide format useful. Wet collodion (Private Fyvie and Sherritf Graham Spiers, 1843. Calotype (National collection. London) Portrait Gallery, London) 5.6 John Thomson: Chao-Chow-Fu Bridge. Woodburytypc (Royal 3.9 D. O. Hill and Robert Adamson: 'The Birdcage', c. 1845. from his bo

tions towards the development of Fine Art in Photography', I. W. Black in Boston (see page 109) and were on an expedition Edinburgh, 1862. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, commissioned by the marine painter, William Bradford of David Hunter McAlpin Fund) New Bedford, Mass.ichusetts. (International Museum of Other illustrations in this chapter are from the Scottish National Photography, George Eastman House) chapter are from the Royal Photo- Galleries (53, 54), Socictc Fraii(;aisc de Photographic (so, 51) Cither illustrations in this graphic Society Chttpicr 4 oPENiNt; PACE Julia Margaret Cameron: 'Pray God Bring Clliiplcr 6

Father Safely Home', c. 1872 (An illustration of Charles Kings- OPENING PAGE Nadir's Studio 1860-1872, 35 Boulevard dcs ley's poem 'The Three Fishers'). 'A Study', c. 1866 - both wet C^apucines. The cast-iron arch of the studio is still visible today. collodion (Royal Photographic Society) Although he had moved the contents of his studio out, 4.1 Julia Margaret Cameron: Alice Liddell. the original 'Alice Nadar w as still the tenant when he let the empty rooms to the

ill Wonderland', c. 1870. Wet collodion (Royal Photographic Impressionists tor their lirst group exhibition in 1874. (Nadar Society) collection. Bibliothctjuc N.itionalc. Paris) 4.2 Julia Margaret Cameron: Alfred Tennyson - 'The Dirty George Eastman: Nadar taken with a no. 2 Kodak camera in Monk', 1865. Wet collodion (Royal Photographic Society) 1890. Nadar was Eastman's agent for the Kodak but they

4.3 Julia Margaret Cameron: 'The Whisper of the Muse". quarrelled. (International Museum of Photography. George George Frederick Watts, the artist and two children, c. 1866. Eastman Hc^use) Wet collodion (Royal Photographic Society) 6.1 Nadar: Self-portrait c. 1854, Wet collodion (Nadar collec- 4.4 Julia Margaret Cameron: A Group of Kalutara Peasants. tion. Bibliothcque Natioualc. Paris) 1S78. Mrs Cameron died in 1879 on her son's plantation at 6.2 Nadar: Alexandre Dumas, pcre. c. 1865. Wet coUtxlioii Kalutara, Ceylon, so this must be one of her last photographs. (Archives Pliotographiques. Paris)

It is inscribed: 'the girl being 12 years of age .iiid the old man 6.3 Nadar : C'amille Corot (before 1 859). An early portrait rakai

saying he is her father and stating himself to be one hundred at Nadar's first studio. 113 rue Saint-Lazare. Wet collodion years of age.' (Royal Photographic Society) (Archives Photographiques. Paris)

Other illustrations in this chapter are from the Royal Photogra- 6.4 Nadar: George Sand as Louis XIV (late i8dos). Wet collo- (Archives Paris) phic Society (66, 68, 69, 72), Victoria and Albert Museum (71) dion Photographiques. 6.5 Nadar: Sarah Bernh.ardt. c. 1865. In her later years the actress Nadar's son. collodion Chnpnr i was to be photographed by Paul. Wet

OPFNINC. p.\(.i: Timothy O'Sulliv.in: His photogr.iphic van on a (Arcliivcs Photographiques, Paris)

survey trip of the western deserts of the USA. He went 6.6 Nadar : Charles Baudelaire, c. 1 8>6. Wet collodion (Archives out on surveys in 1S71 and 1874. Wet collodion (Library of Photographiques. Paris) Congress) 6.7 Nadar: Old woman, c. i860. Wet collodion (Nadar coUec- Bisson Frcres: The Ascent of Mont Blanc, c. i860. Wet collo- lioii, Bibliothcque Nalionale) dion (Victoria and Albert Museum) Other illustraiions in this chapter are from the Nadar Collection. Samuel Bourne; 'Panoramic View at Chini' September 1S63. Bibliothcque Nationalc, Paris (96. 97. 98). Maison de Balzac. 'Directly on the opposite side ... rise the great Kylass and photo R. Lalancc(95) Raldung peaks to the elevation of 22,000 ft.' Wet collodion (India Office Library) Chapter 7 Li'iuU'n, s.i Samuel Bourne: 'A bit on the new road near Rogi' about OPENING PAGE John Thomson : Scenes from Street Life in

September 1S66. From Bourne's third trek to the Himalayas. 1 877. Top left (clockwise) : The ' Wall-worker', the Street Lock-

866 catalogue. The caption is for 1 506. smith, the London Boardincn, Workers on the 'Silent High- 1 so6b is not listed in the 1 Wet collodion (Private collection, London) way'. C'ast-iron Billy. 'Hookey Alf ' of Whitechapcl. Wood- (Royal Photographic Society) _s.2 Samuel Bourne: Deodars in the snow, Simla, c. 1868. burytypes Bourne was based at Simla and so had opportunities to photo- 7.1 Wood and Gibson: Federal mortar battery. Yorktowni. series. collo- Virginia. 1862. (Library Congress) graph It in all weathers. One of .an impressive Wet of dion (Private collection, London) 7.2 Timothy H. O'Sullivan: 'Council of War'. Massapoiu.x with 15eodars c:hurch. Virginia. 21 1864. General Ulysses S. Grant is 5.3 Samuel Bourne : 'View near Chini Mountains, May -- nearest trees. (Library in foreground' 1866. Almost certainly taken on same day as writing a dispatch left end ofbench two C'oiigress) S.I. Wet coliodion (Private collection. London) of 1

PIONEERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY

7-3 Probably Alexander Gardner: Crippled locomotive of Chapter g the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad, Richmond Depot, OPENING PAGE Frank Eugene: Group (left to right) shows Virginia, 1865. (Library of Congress) Eugene, Alfred Stieghtz, Heinnch Kiihn, and Edward

7.4 Unknown photographer: Dead Confederate, in trenches Stcichen, c. 1905. (Royal Photographic Society) at Fort Mohanc, Virginia, April 1865. (Library of Congress) Francis Picabia : Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz( 291. 1916)

7.5 F. Galton, FRS, and Dr F- A. Mahomed, with G. Turner and 1 Hcinrich Kiihn: Small girl, c. 1900. (Royal Photographic Mr Mackic, photographer to Pcntonville Convict Prison: Society) Plate II of 'An Inquiry into the Physiognomy of Phthisis by the 2 J'ames Craig Annan: Ellen Terry, 1898. (Royal Photogra- Method of "Composite Portraiture'", 1881. An early attempt phic Society) (like 7.7) to use photographs as medical evidence. Autotype 3 Robert Demachy: Figure Study. From etched negative gum (Guy's Hospital Report 1881) bichromate, 1906. (Royal Photographic Society) JX^ Photographic Department, Dr Baniardo's Homes, c. 1875. 4 Clarence White: 'The Mirror'. 1912. (Royal Photographic Each child would have its photograph taken on arrival at Dr Society)

Baniardo's. (Bamardo Photo Library) 5 Alvin Langdon Cobuni: Ludgate Circus with St Paul's, 7.7 D. O. Hill and Robert Adamson: Woman with a goitre. 1904-6. Photogravure (Royal Photographic Society)

Calotypc (Scottish National Portrait Gallery) 6 Alfred Stieghtz : Pans II, 191 1. (Royal Photographic Society) 7.8 Thomas Annan: Old Glasgow Close - 75 High Street, 7 Alfred Stieghtz: Winter, New York, 1892. From Camera c. i86_s. Modem print from the original negative, c. 1845. Work no. 12, 1905. (Royal Photographic Society) Wet collodion (Thomas Annan &: Sons, Glasgow) 7.9 Unknown photographer: Two Amerindian women, c. Chapter 10 1S50. Daguerreotype (hiternational Museum of Photography, OPENING PAGE Johii Cimoii WarbuTg in his darkroom working

George Eastman House) on a gum print, c. 1910. (Private collection, London)

7.10 Samuel Bourne: Toda Villagers, c, 1868. Wet collodion 10. 1 Louis Lumiere: experimental autochromc of his father (Royal Photographic Society) Antoine. This shows the problems the Lunuerc brothers had 7. 1 John Thomson: 'Interior of Native Travelling Boat' with the even distribution of the coloured starch granules

Wpodburytype from his book China and lis Pvoplc, London which acted as filters, c. 1905. (Dr Paul Genard) 1873. (Royal Photographic Society) TO. 2 Louis Lumiere: Lyons in the snpw. Early autochrome,

7.12 John Thomson: Physic Street, Canton. Woodburylypc c. 1908. (Dr Paul Genard)

from his book China and Its Pt'opU\ London 1873. (Royal 10.3 Louis Lumiere: Young Lady with an umbrella, c. 1907. Photographic Society) (Time-Life Pubhcations, photo Societe Lumiere)

Other illustrations in this chapter are from the Library ofCongress 10.4 Frank Eugene : Kitty Stieghtz, daughter of Alfred Stieghtz, (109), Private collection, London (108), Royal Photographic probably taken at Tutzing, Germany, 1907. Autochromc Society (iii) (Alfred Stieghtz collection, Art Institute of Chicago.) 10.5 Alfred Stieghtz: Frank Eugene, Tutzing, 1907. Auto- Chapter S chromc (Alfred Stieghtz collection, Art Institute of Chicago) OPENING PAGE Eadweard Muybridge: Abe Edgiiitoii driven b>- 10.6 Probably Frank Eugene: Emmclme Stieglitz, first wife of C. Marvin 15 June 1878. From his book The Attitndes of Alfred Stieglitz, Tutzmg 1907. Autothrome (Alfred Stieghtz

Aiiitnah iti Aiotion, Palo Alto, 1881. The negatives of the photo- collection. Art Institute of Chicago)

graphs were made at intervals of about i 25 second, the expo- 10.7 Alfred Stieglitz: His mother, c. 1907. Autochromc sure about 2,000th second. (Kingston-upon-Thamcs Museum (Alfred Stieghtz collection. Art Institute of Chicago) Saltbuni Sands, Yorkshire, c. and Art Gallery) 10.8 J. C. Warburg: Cow at 1909- Eadweard Muybridge. 'Leland Stanford Jr. on his pony. Autochrome (Royal Photographic Society) south of Palo Alto. May 1879' Lantern shde inscribed by Muybridge. 10.9 J. C. Warburg: Peggy Warburg (probably (Stanford University) France) c. 1909. Autochromc (Royal Photographic Society')

8.1 Eadweard Muybridge: San Francisco, c. 1870. (Kingston- 10.10 George Beniard Shaw: Beatrice Webb. Autochromc upon-Thamcs Museum and Art Gallery) () 8.2 Eadweard Muybridge: Group of indians.Nanaimo district

of Vancouver Island, c. 1868. (Kingston-upon-Thames Mu- Other ilhtstrations seum and Art Gallery) FRONT COVER Nadar: self-portrait in a balloon basket taken in collection, 8.3 Eadweard Muybridge : Woman climbijig on and off a table. his studio, c. i860. Wet collodion (Nadar Bibho- From Animal Locomotion, 1887. Photogravure {Royal Photo- theque Nationale, Pans) graphic Society) TTILE PAGE Herman Krone: Self-portrait with his photographic (Staatliche LandesbildstelJe Hamburg) 8.4 Dr E. J. Marey: Chronophotographic pictures of birds in equipment. flight, c. 1882. (Musee des Beaux Arts. Beaune-photo EUebc, CONTENTS PAGE Samucl A. Cooley, 'US Photographer. Depart- Rouen) ment of the South', his assistants and photographic waggons. 8.5 Dr E.J. Marey: Aerodynamic studies usmg fme streams ot Wet collodion (Library of Congress) smoke, c. 1884. (Musee des Beaux Arts, Beaune - photo-Ellebe, PAGE 8 Henry Fox Talbot: The family coach and footman at Rouen) Lacock Abbey, 1840. A calotype made soon after the discovery

Other illustrations in the chapter are from Kingston-upon- of the process. 'Done ii\ 3 minutes'. (Science Museum) Thames Museum and Art Gallery (126, 128 top, 129 top), Marey Institute, Pans (130, 131, 132, 133), Royal Photographic Society- (128 bottom, 129 bottom) An Early Victorian Album (the Hill Adamson collection), colin BIBLIOGRAPHY FORD AND DR ROY STRONG, Jonathan Cape, 1974. Sim Pictures, the Hill-AJamson calotypes, david bruce. Studio Vista, 1973. General Art and photography, AARON SCHARF, Allen Lane, The Penguin Julia Margaret Caineroti Press, 1968. Julia Margaret Cameron, ali:>i)S a.nd hel.mut gernsheim, the Hisioire Jc la dicouverie dc la pholographk, GEORGES POTONNIEE, Fountain Press, 1948, New York: Aperture, rev. cdn. 1974. Paris: Maitcl, 1925 (French). English translation by Edward Victorian photographs offamous men andfair wometi byJulia Margaret Epstcan, New York, 1936. Cameron, vibcinia woolf and roceb fry, Hogarth Press, 1926. Hisioire de la phoio\;raphic, Raymond leclvfr, Paris: Baschct, New cdn. with preface by tristam poweli, 1973. 1945 (French). Tlie hislory of photography, hel.mut and aiison cernsiieim, Xadar Thames ajid Hudson, rev. cdn. 1969. S'adar, JEAN PRINET AND ANTOINETTE DiLLASSER, Pans: Armand Iina<;e of America iSjg-tgoo, a catalogue of an exhibition, Colin, 1966 (French). Washington D.C.: Librar\- of Congress, 1957. Xadar: catalogue ofexhibition ofhis life's ivork. Paris: Bibliothcquc Masters ofphotoi^raphy, beau.mont and nancy newhall, New- Nationalc, 1965. York: George Braziller Inc., 195S. Photography and the American scene - a social history, iSjf-lSSg, Docuiiieiilary photography H'ar, Washington, ROBERT TAFT, New York : 1936; Dover Publications, 2nd edn. (Gardner's photographic sketch book ofthe Civil 1964. i86j; New York: Dover Publications, 1959. Pioneers of science and discovery - Ceorge Eastman attd the early A/

tions on processes, D. B. tho.mas, HMSO, ic)f*). Sireel life in London, JOHN THOMSON AND adolphe SMITH, Wakefield, Yorks: E. P. Publishing Ltd, 1973 (facsim. of

Fox Talbol 1 877 edn.)

The ftrsi ncoatives, D. B. THOMAS, Science Museum Monograph, HMSO,"i965. Moving pictures Guide to Lacoch Abbey, The National Trust, 1974. Animals in motion, eadweard .muybridge. Chapman and Hall. Photooraphy: men and movements Vol. 2- William H. Fox Talbol, 1889. Dover Publications, 1957. inventor of the negative—positive process, ANDRE JA.MMES, New The human jigure in motion, F.ADWEARD .MUYBRIDGE, Chapman Publications. York : Macmillaii Publishing Co. Inc., 1974- and Hall, 1901, Dover 1955. years ANTtA VEN- IVilliani Henry Fox Talbot:father ofphotography , ARTHUR booth. Eadweard Muybridge: the Stanford 1872-1882, Pub. Arthur Barker, 1965. TURA .MOZLEY, et al. catalogue of exhibition, California: H 'illiam Henry Fox Talbot, F.R.S. - material towards a biography, Stanford University Press, 1972. - collcacd by j. Dudley johnston. Part I in T//f Photographic Lt'iiis Lumiere Cinema d'Aujourd'hui, GEORGES SADOUL, Ediciom II Photographic Journal, January 1947. pages 3-13 ; Part in The Seghcrs, Pans 1964 (French). Journal no. to, December 1968, pages 361-371. La phoioiiraphie Animee, EUGENE TRUTAT, Paris: Gauthier-ViUars. 1S99 (French). Niepce attd Daotierre Dagnerre, 1787-18}!: catalogue of exhibition, Bibliothcquc Photo Secession Nationale and George Eastman House, 1961. Photo Secession, photography as a jine art, ROBERT DOTY, mono- ttu- daguerreotype, Eastman House, L.J. A/. Daguerre: the hislory of the diorama and graph no. 1, Rochester, New York: George HELMUT and .vlison gernshelm, Secker and Warburg, 1956. i960. New York: Dover Publications, 1969. Alfred Stieglit^: photographer, Boston, USA: Museum of Fine Joseph Nicephore Niepce: Leitres 1S16-1S1- Conespondance con- Art, 1965 (Catalogue of Museum's collection with introduc- servee a Chdlon-sur-Saonc, Association du 'Pavilion de la tion by Dorothy Bry). Photographic' du Pare Naturel Regional de Brotonnc 1973 Cnmtrii Hiirt: a critical anthology, 190J-1917, ed. JONATHAN (French). GREEN, New York: Aperture. 19T3. America and Alfred Stieglit:, a collective portrait, WALDO FRANK Bayard ct al. New York: Doubleday, 1934- York: Museum Bayard, Paris: Lo. Duca Editions Prisma, 1943. Steicben the photographer, CARL SANDBURG, New French primitive photography, ANDRE JAMME.S AND ROBERT of Modem Art. 1961. SOBIESZEK, New York: Aperture, 1970. Hippolyte Bayard - catalogue of exhibition, Essen: Folkwang Colour photography premiers pltotographcs 01 coiilrurs, uitroduction by Museum, 1959- Lmniire: Lcs PAUI GENARD and ANDRE B.\RR[T. Pans: Andre Barret. 1974.

Hill and Adamson For more detailed infonuation. coiuult the sources provided in A centenary exhibition ofthe worh ofDavid Oclavins Hill, 1 S02-70, the text. and Robert Adamsoii, 1821-48, katherine michaelson, Scot- tish Arts Council, I97i-

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